Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF A MEMBER

Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Iorwerth Rhys Thomas, esquire, Member for Rhondda, West, and I desire on behalf of the House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the hon. Member.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Pharmaceuticals (Imports and Exports)

Sir N. Cooper-Key: asked the Minister of Health what amount in dollars and other foreign currencies was spent in the United Kingdom on imported drugs and medicines during the 12 months to date.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): The value of pharmaceuticals imported in the year up to October, 1966, was £12·9 million of which £2·8 million was from North America.

Sir N. Cooper-Key: What proportion of the total prescriptions made up during that year does that figure represent?

Mr. Robinson: The percentage is small. If the hon. Member wants an accurate mathematical figure, he will have to put a Question down on the Order Paper.

Mr. Fisher: asked the Minister of Health whether he will state the amount earned in foreign exchange by the exports of the British pharmaceutical industry during the past 12 months.

Mr. K. Robinson: The value of "Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Products"

exported from the United Kingdom for the year up to October, 1966, was £65·15 million, of which £37·17 million was to non-sterling areas, but the net foreign exchange earnings would, of course, be much less after allowing for imports of raw materials and remission overseas of royalties and dividends, the figures for which are not ascertainable.

Mr. Fisher: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that direct exports this year are running at the rate of over £73 million a year, which is 6½ times the level of imports, and that even this does not show the industry's true contribution to the balance of payments, because it does not include the earnings of British subsidiary companies operating overseas?

Mr. Robinson: I had in mind that, according to the industry itself, in 1963 it had contributed £35 million to the balance of payments. This was, incidentally, almost entirely earned by British-owned firms. The net export earnings of British subsidiaries of overseas firms slightly exceeded their net remittances abroad.

Mr. Braine: I hope the Minister is not going to be grudging about this remarkable industry. Is it not a fact that exports in the last 12 months are 9 per cent. up on the year before? Would he not admit that this industry makes a valuable contribution not merely to the conquest of disease but also to the balance of payments?

Mr. Robinson: I have not contradicted this. I just wanted to get the figures right. I gave the figures in my original Answer, and for the year up to October the gross figure was £65·15 million.

Land

Mr. Loveys: asked the Minister of Health whether, in disposing of land for which his Department has no further use, he will give the previous owners first refusal if they had been unwilling sellers to his Department in the first place even though they did not insist on compulsory purchase.

Mr. K. Robinson: No, Sir. Other Government Departments have first refusal of surplus hospital land.

Mr. Loveys: Does not the Minister feel under a definite moral obligation, particularly if land is not needed for the public benefit, to offer the land back to the owners, who agreed to sell purely to help the hospital service and who would now be offered the land back automatically had it been compulsorily purchased in the first place?

Mr. Robinson: No, Sir. Surplus hospital land for which there is no other Government use is then offered, save in one set of exceptional circumstances, to local authorities.

Mr. Loveys: May I give notice that, owing to the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Hospital Supplies Organisation (Report)

Mr. Loveys: asked the Minister of Health what representations he has received concerning the Report of the Committee on Hospital Supplies Organisation under the chairmanship of Mr. Hunt.

Mr. K. Robinson: I have invited comments on the Report from interested bodies, but have so far heard from only a few.

Mr. Loveys: In view of the real concern felt within the suppliers' organisation of the Health Service about certain of this Committee's proposals, is the Minister aware that there is a real need for further consultation with the people doing the job on the spot before reaching a final decision?

Mr. Robinson: It is early to say what the reactions to the Report will be, but I have asked for comments by the end of the year and I shall, of course, study them very carefully when I receive them.

Mr. John Page: Does the Minister insinuate that he will publish the Report in full, or has he passed it to certain organisations? Is he aware that a large number of organisations are holding up their manufacturing programmes until a decision is reached about the recommendations of the Report?

Mr. Robinson: Copies of the Report have been made available not only to

hospital authorities but to a wide range of interested professional and staff organisations and trade associations. They have also been given to the professional Press.

Cervical Cancer Tests

Mr. Boston: asked the Minister of Health whether he is satisfied that it is sufficient for cervical cancer tests to be carried out once every five years; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. K. Robinson: I am advised that on present information the interval is reasonable, but I shall be willing to reconsider it in the light of experience and research.

Mr. Boston: My right hon. Friend's willingness to reconsider it will be welcome, because it is the view of some doctors that a short period of, say, two years would be preferable, especially in view of the fact that one of the two forms of cancer concerned tends to develop rather more quickly than the others.

Mr. Robinson: Research is going on into this. All I can say is that at the moment the five-year interval is based on what we consider the probable natural history of the pre-invasive condition.

Mr. Braine: We very much welcome the Minister's willingness to look at this aspect of the matter. Is he aware that recent experience of screening suggests that some positive results are being detected now among women below the age of 35? Would he consider the possibility of reducing the age at which screening begins?

Mr. Robinson: We have discussed this before at Question Time. The lower age limit is to some extent tied to our resources and the stage of development of the service. Women below that age who want to have a test are not refused and the full service will be extended as soon as possible.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: Is the Minister certain that there are sufficient facilities to deal with all cases which are detected by this test?

Mr. Robinson: No doubt the hon. Member means hospital facilities—and the answer is, Yes. Sir.

Dr. John Dunwoody: asked the Minister of Health what progress is being made in the provision of facilities for cervical smear tests.

Mr. K. Robinson: By June of this year tests were being performed at a rate of nearly 1¼ million a year. This was double the figure for June 1965.

Dr. Dunwoody: I thank my hon. Friend for that most encouraging reply. Will he ensure that further public health education measures are taken to encourage more of the women who are especially at risk to visit these clinics? Would he also take steps to ensure that, wherever possible, clinics are held in the evening so that women with large families can more easily visit them?

Mr. Robinson: I will certainly consider the last point my hon. Friend has made. Publicity has to be carefully managed locally to keep it more or less in line with the development of facilities. I have been in communication with local health authorities which are responsible for publicity on this point.

Drug Industry (Public Ownership)

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Minister of Health if he will take steps to bring the drug industry into public ownership to avoid the competitiveness in this field.

Mr. K. Robinson: I cannot usefully comment on this proposal in advance of the report of the Sainsbury Committee.

Mr. Roberts: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that duplication of research and wasted expenditure on advertising detracts from the efficiency of this industry? Is he aware that on this side of the House there is a strong suspicion that in certain sections of the industry private profit takes priority over human health?

Mr. Robinson: The matters to which my hon. Friend has referred are certainly within the terms of reference of the Sainsbury Committee.

Mr. Fisher: In considering these matters, will the right hon. Gentleman always bear in mind that his hon. Friend is really advocating a State monopoly on the lines of the system that operates in

Russia, where notoriously no new drugs are being produced and where the industry is about the worst in the world?

Mr. Robinson: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall, as always, bear all the relevant considerations in mind; but I think that we had better await the report of the Committee.

Mr. Braine: May I remind the right hon. Gentleman, concerning his hon. Friend's suggestion, that the Department's statistics show that competition between drug firms has had the effect in recent years of sharply reducing prices?

Mr. Robinson: That may be true in one or two cases. Competition where there are patents to the extent that there are in the pharmaceutical industry is, of course, limited.

Drug Addiction (Treatment)

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Minister of Health what steps he has taken towards setting up a pilot scheme for the treatment of drug addiction.

Mr. K. Robinson: I would refer my hon. Friend to my reply to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Dr. Winstanley) on 24th November.—[Vol. 736, c. 354.] A further meeting of the conference of experts will take place next week.

Mrs. Short: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the considerable concern on both sides of the House about the lack of progress since the publication of the Brain Report? What is being done about the register of addicts, about over-prescribing by doctors and about treatment centres? Is he aware that several doctors have ceased to treat addicts and that this is of grave concern to us all'?

Mr. Robinson: I am aware of the concern in the House generally about this problem. I assure my hon. Friend that we are not by any means inactive in this matter, and that, in any case two of the things she asks for would require legislation and I am not yet in a position to make a statement about that.

Disabled Persons and Chronic Sick

Mr. Astor: asked the Minister of Health if he will initiate an inquiry into the overall needs of disabled people and


the steps necessary further to co-ordinate the services at present provided by various authorities.

Mr. Braine: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking to ascertain the needs of the disabled and chronic sick and the steps necessary to improve and co-ordinate the services provided for them by all the authorities concerned.

Mr. K. Robinson: A number of studies of the needs of the disabled or of the services provided for them are in progress or projected, and I see no need for any general inquiry.

Mr. Astor: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the Answer to the last Question indicates a lack of necessary knowledge? Does not the fact that at least seven Ministries are concerned with various aspects of the disabled, as well as local authorities, indicate that there is a great need for us to have a fuller understanding of the problem and for more adequate action to be taken to cure it?

Mr. Robinson: I agree that one of the difficulties about the terms "disablement" and "chronic sick" is that they have no precise meaning. I have sponsored a research project to find an acceptable measure of "disablement" for use in a subsequent prevalence study. A study into the state of the services provided and demanded will, if practicable, be associated with this.

Mr. Braine: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the disabled generally and the chronic sick in particular, who get no constant attendance allowance when at home, are wholly dependent on local authority services, which vary widely in both scope and quality from one part of the country to another? Would it not be helpful, in the framing of policy, for the Minister to co-ordinate what is being done and inaugurate fresh inquiries so that something effective may be done for our fellow citizens?

Mr. Robinson: Many of the chronic sick, particularly the young chronic sick, are dependent on hospital services as well as local authority services. My Standing Medical Advisory Committee has advised me to undertake a survey of the services they receive in hospital. That will be

done, and, in addition, my Department is conducting a planning study of the home help service, which is relevant to this problem, and a sub-committee is being set up to review the services for epileptics. This shows that a great deal is being done in this matter.

Mr. Molloy: Would my right hon. Friend indicate that the representations which have been made to him and which may be made in future by the Disablement Income Group will be afforded full and authoritative examination?

Mr. Robinson: I should, perhaps, refer my hon. Friend to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Dr. David Owen) on 17th November.

Dr. Winstanley: Would the Minister not agree that he has himself outlined the difficulty here in that there are so many different organizations—hospitals, home helps, local authorities and seven Ministries—involved in providing these services? Would he, therefore, not agree that there is a real and urgent need for integration under somebody like a disabled persons' officer?

Mr. Robinson: No, Sir. I do not think that that would be the solution to this problem. The two areas to which I referred are both under my Departmental responsibility, and I do not believe that there is any serious lack of co-ordination there.

Motor Vehicles

Mr. Brooks: asked the Minister of Health whether, in the light of his review of the problem, he will now agree to provide suitably converted cars for disabled drivers instead of the single-seater vehicles at present provided.

Mr. Fortescue: asked the Minister of Health when he expects to receive and act upon the promised report on invalid vehicles.

Mr. Robert Davies: asked the Minister of Health when a report will be made on the feasibility of providing suitably adapted small cars for the use of disabled persons and their families.

Mrs. Knight: asked the Minister of Health whether he has completed his


review of the regulations governing the circumstances in which his Department bears the cost of converting vehicles to hand-controls for war-disabled pensioners; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Dean: asked the Minister of Health whether the current review of vehicles for the disabled will include financial help for people who have their own cars adapted or who buy cars which are already suitably adapted.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Health when he proposes to provide disabled drivers with two-seater vehicles or an alternative cash allowance, equal to the cost of maintaining single-seater tricycles, to offset the cost of maintaining their own cars.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin): My right hon. Friend is studying the results of the review and hopes to make a statement to the House early in the New Year.

Mr. Brooks: I thank my hon. Friend for that indication that further thought is being given to this matter. Is he aware that the House was given to understand in the summer that the results of this review would be made available during the earlier part of the winter? Is it not a matter on which neither procrastination nor parsimony should be allowed to stand in the way of the happiness of the disabled?

Mr. Loughlin: I must correct my hon. Friend on one point, which is that I have constantly said in the House that I hoped to have this review available before the end of the year.

Mr. Davies: Is my hon. Friend aware that the provision of suitably adapted small cars would enable disabled people to live more normal family lives?

Mr. Loughlin: Without wishing to be presumptuous, I do not believe that anyone is more aware than I am of the problems and benefits that might accrue from this review. All the problems concerning this issue will be taken into account in the review.

Mrs. Knight: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Brooks) and that a promise was made to me

last summer, four months ago, that a review would shortly be forthcoming, that this was said eight months after I had first raised this matter, and that for 12 months previously my predecessor had been raising it? Since this is a straightforward matter of fairness to disabled ex-Service men, does he not agree that it is time that his Department got a move on?

Mr. Loughlin: The last thing I want to do is to get involved in a political discussion on this subject. I have repeatedly said time and again from this Box this year that I hoped to get the review through by the end of the year.

Mr. Dean: Referring to Question No. 49, can the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the anomalies which appear to exist in the case of those who buy vehicles which have automatic transmission and appear to get a smaller grant will be dealt with in the review?

Mr. Loughlin: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend will take into account all these matters. But apart from this review, if the hon. Gentleman has a particular case and will let me have the details, I shall be glad to look at them for him.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Can the hon. Gentleman assure us that the problems of alternative grants as well as second seats in these vehicles are being included in this inquiry? He will surely be aware that we are all conscious of the problem and difficulties, but we do not accept that these difficulties can any longer stand in the way of the provision of these things?

Mr. Loughlin: I am not too sure precisely what the hon. Gentleman means by alternative grants, but I can assure him that what has been discussed in question and answer in this House and all other related matters will be considered in this review.

Sir R. Cary: I am aware of the very large sum of money involved and also of the concern which is always shown by the hon. Gentleman about this matter, but I think that the provision of a substantial amount of money on motor cars for the disabled——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must know he must ask a question.

Sir R. Cary: I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Loughlin: I think I understand the hon. Member's question, although it was not posed in the form of a question. He referred to the substantial amount of money involved, and I would ask the House to recognise that the question of the additional amount of money which can be allocated will have to be considered in the light of all the other priorities with which my Department is concerned.

Doctors (Countries of Origin)

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: asked the Minister of Health what proportion respectively and excluding consultants, of the physicians and surgeons working in the Hospital Service are citizens of the United Kingdom; and whether he will publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT figures showing separately for each regional hospital board the numbers and country of birth of doctors, excluding consultants, both resident and non-resident working in the Hospital Service.

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Minister of Health how many doctors now working in British hospitals were born outside the United Kingdom.

Mr. K. Robinson: I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT such figures as are readily available.

Mr. Macmillan: To what extent is the National Health Service relying on doctors other than those born in this country—that is, doctors largely from the Commonwealth?

Mr. Robinson: Taking all the grades from senior registrar downwards, the total number is 4,854 doctors. The percentages vary considerably according to the grade.

Mr. Goodhart: In view of this very large number, what steps has the Minister taken to discover what proportion of the doctors who are immigrants intend to return to their countries of origin in the comparatively near future?

Mr. Robinson: Doctors have been coming here for post-graduate training for very many years. I do not think that the pattern has changed materially between those who stay and those who—and these form by far the larger majorit—return home again when their training is over.

Following are the figures:

1. Information by citizenship is not available; but in the following grades the percentage of doctors born in the United Kingdom and Eire, at 30th September, 1965, was:—


Senior registrars
85 per cent


Registrars
54 per cent


Junior hospital medical officers
59 per cent


Senior house officers
41 per cent


House officers
72 per cent

4,854 doctors in these grades were from other countries.

2. Number of Medical Staff of the grade of Registrar and below in each region in England and Wales at 30th September, 1965, analysed by place of birth:—



Grades of Registrar and below


Region
Total
Born in United Kingdom and Eire
Born Elsewhere


All regions: Total
10,234
5,573
4,661


Newcastle region*
581
262
319


Leeds region*
561
238
323


Sheffield region*
638
264
374


East Anglian region*
265
134
131


London regions†
4,219
2,546
1,673


Oxford region*
383
228
155


South Western region*
519
333
186


Welsh region*
547
250
297


Birmingham region*
838
424
414


Manchester region*
866
381
485


Liverpool region*
553
350
203


Wessex region
264
163
101

Notes:

* Also includes the staff of the regional teaching hospitals.

† Includes all staff of the Metropolitan Hospital Boards and of the London Post-graduate and Undergraduate teaching hospitals.

Staff holding appointments with more than one employing authority are included separately under each authority.

Dental Health Education (Report)

Mr. Julius Silverman: asked the Minister of Health what steps he proposes to take to implement the recommendations contained in the Cohen Report on Health Education which relate to dental health education.

Mr. Loughlin: On 1st December, a joint circular from the Health and Education Departments was sent to all local health and education authorities in England and Wales with suggestions for strengthening their dental services, including their arrangements for dental health education. My right hon. Friend will consider with the new health Education Council, when it is set up, what further steps should be taken.

Mr. Silverman: Could my hon. Friend say when this consideration is likely to


take place, and will he bear in mind that it is anomalous that in a matter of national concern dental health education should be borne simply by the profession at the present moment?

Mr. Loughlin: My right hon. Friend has actually recently informed local authorities and dental and other interests of his proposal for the setting up of this body and has asked for nominations.

Geriatric Services

Dr. John Dunwoody: asked the Minister of Health what plans there are to develop further the geriatric services.

Mr. K. Robinson: I have asked hospital boards to make an early provision in their programmes for the expansion of their geriatric services.

Dr. Dunwoody: Would my right hon. Friend go further and try to encourage a much greater degree of co-ordination between hospital services, general practitioner services and local authority services with the intention of maintaining many more old folk in their own homes rather than in institutions and hospitals?

Mr. Robinson: Yes, I have on several occasions urged on all authorities in the Service the desirability of co-ordinated planning of joint operations for these services. I agree with what my hon. Friend has said.

Mr. Pavitt: In view of the need to pursue this line of co-ordination, would my right hon. Friend seek to have in various areas an experiment in a changed structure of co-ordination between the three wings of the Service to deal with old people?

Mr. Robinson: In so far as this is possible under the present statutory structure, I think that my hon. Friend will find that this is already taking place in certain areas.

Mrs. Knight: Will the Minister take steps to ensure that local authorities have more money to spend on domiciliary services, because these are of vital importance in keping old people happy?

Mr. Robinson: The hon. Lady knows that the provision of local services is a matter for local authorities. They must decide their priorities as between the

various headings of expenditure which they incur.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the Minister aware how disappointed we are in North-East Essex that he has not been able to help us with day hospitals?

Mr. Robinson: If the hon. Gentleman has a Question about his constituency or area, I should be obliged if he would table it.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I called the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) for the next Question, but he got a supplementary through on this one.

Play Groups

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Health if he will recognise play groups for young children as a social service for which grants are made available, particularly in areas of high blocks of flats.

Mr. Loughlin: This matter will be considered when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science considers the report of the Central Advisory Councils for Education on primary education, including the educational needs of children under five.

Mr. Allaun: I am grateful for that Answer, for what are mothers to do if they have nowhere to put their children to play? How can mothers living on the tenth floor run down in time to keep their toddlers from running in front of traffic?

Mr. Loughlin: My Department is concerned, in dealing with the question of children under five, with children who need care on health and welfare grounds.

Mr. Bence: Will my hon. Friend consider that in the planning of high blocks of flats of high density provision should be made for play-group facilities?

Mr. Loughlin: There may be much in what my hon. Friend says, but planning, of course, is a matter for the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

Medical Research

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Minister of Health what is his estimate of the amounts spent on medical research


in the years 1955, 1960, and 1965, respectively; and what steps he is taking to increase this research.

Mr. K. Robinson: The approximate amounts spent by my Department on medical research in England and Wales were as follows:

£


1955–56
…
…
…
28,000


1960–61
…
…
…
131,000


1965–66
…
…
…
685,000






(estimated)

I hope to continue to increase this provision. The main responsibility for allocating funds for medical research lies with the Medical Research Council.

Mr. Roberts: While I welcome the increased amount spent on research, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he does not agree that it is now high time to break away completely from the miserly attitude of our Tory predecessors? Would he further agree that some of the millions of pounds wasted on armaments could be transferred to meet this human need?

Mr. Robinson: I can only repeat that, so far as my Department is concerned, I hope to continue increasing the provision.

Dr. Winstanley: Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed the growth in the number of professionally-sponsored organisations which are set up purely to raise money for research into such matters as congenital heart disease and leukemia? Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that this growth represents a failure on the part of official sources to provide enough money for research?

Mr. Robinson: No, I would not agree with that. I think this is probably more a question for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science.

Roehampton Hospital (Limb Fitters)

Mr. A. Royle: asked the Minister of Health if he will now make a statement on the distress and inconvenience caused to patients by the work-to-rule by limb fitters at Roehampton.

Mr. Channon: asked the Minister of Health if he will now intervene to end

the work to rule by limb fitters at Roehampton.

Mr. K. Robinson: An agreement has been reached between the employers and the union, and the limb fitters have today resumed normal working.

Mr. Royle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the country will be delighted that this shameful business is finished? Is he also aware that there is great concern about the appointments system at Roehampton Hospital, which was partly involved with the working-to-rule by the fitters? Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for an immediate inquiry to take place into the appointments system at Roehampton Hospital?

Mr. Robinson: We are constantly seeking ways of improving the appointments system, but I think that the important and immediate thing for me to do is to get rid as quickly as possible of the waiting list that has developed as a result of the go-slow.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: While being grateful to the Minister for his original reply and for his reply to the supplementary question, may I ask whether he will consider again looking carefully into the facilities at Roehampton Hospital which, I understand, have caused some of the complaints among both patients and those who work there—facilities which were once adequate but are no longer so owing to the increase in work?

Mr. Robinson: If the hon. Gentleman has any specific criticism or complaint to make on behalf of those who go to Roehampton Hospital for treatment, I shall be very glad indeed to look into it.

Invalid Children (Co-ordination of Services)

Mr. Archer: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking to co-ordinate the diagnosis, treatment and social welfare provisions available for invalid children.

Mr. Loughlin: In March of this year a joint circular was sent by the Department of Education and Science and my Department to all local health, welfare and education authorities calling for a review of arrangements for co-ordinating services for handicapped children and


young people, and emphasising the importance of early and complete diagnosis and continuing care and support. Reports from these authorities are now being considered.

Mr. Archer: While thinking my hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him to bear in mind when he reviews the matter that a great deal of suffering could be avoided if the results of early diagnosis were made available to education authorities so that they could place children in suitable schools, and to the youth employment service to enable it to place them in suitable employment?

Mr. Loughlin: I appreciate my hon. Friend's point. My right hon. Friend will be considering the reports and, no doubt, will bear in mind what my hon. Friend has said.

Day Nurseries (Building Programme)

Miss Lestor: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the concern expressed by many local authorities regarding the unregistered child minder, whether he will take steps to ensure that the present-day nursery building programmes of local authorities are fully implemented without delay and extended to meet the growing demand.

Mr. Loughlin: Local authorities' ten-year plans envisage an increase of 68 in the number of day nurseries between 1965–66 and 1975–76. Thirty-two day nurseries are included among the capital building projects for which my right hon. Friend hopes to recommend loan sanction this year and in 1967–68. He will review the programmes again early next year.

Miss Lestor: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but is he not aware that because the demand for these places exceeds the supply there is a growing mushrooming of rather unsatisfactory child-minding services now? Would he therefore give an assurance to the House that there is no plan to cut this nursery building programme in the foreseeable future?

Mr. Loughlin: We consulted local health authorities in 1965 and asked them to review the arrangements in force in their areas under the Nurseries and Child Minders Regulation Act. A small num-

ber of local authorities raised the question of unsatisfactory and illegal minding. I would not like the House to get this out of all proportion. We shall keep watching the position.

Infant Welfare Clinics

Miss Lestor: asked the Minister of Health how many local authorities have set up weekend or evening infant welfare clinics.

Mr. Loughlin: I regret that this information is not available centrally.

Miss Lestor: Is my hon. Friend aware that some of these clinics have been set up and in one, for example, in the Notting Hill Gate area the number of attendances has more than doubled since it was set up four years ago? Would my hon. Friend not agree that this demonstrates that there is a demand for these services and that possibly many young children would probably not receive the services of a welfare clinic unless it takes place in the evening or at the weekend?

Mr. Loughlin: I agree that, in addition to the clinic mentioned by my hon. Friend, there have been one or two other experiments along these lines in London. But I am not sure that evening clinics of this kind are as satisfactory as may appear on the surface. I would not like to think that we were pursuing a policy which meant that youngsters would be kept up very late in the evening.

Doctors (Supply>

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking to increase the number of qualified doctors in this country by 1970.

Mr. K. Robinson: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) on 24th October.—[Vol. 734, c. 622–3.]

Mr. Goodhart: How does the Minister expect to increase the supply of doctors when the morale of clinical teachers has been shattered by the mishandling of their salary claim? Can the Minister give an assurance that the just claim of the clinical teachers will be met by the end of July?

Mr. Robinson: I am sure that the hon. Member knows that that is a question for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science.

Mr. Braine: Yes, but I think that the House would like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman, whose heart is in the right place on this issue, I am sure, is making the strongest possible representations because, as my hon. Friend said, unless young clinical teachers are encouraged to remain in the medical schools the medical schools will not be able to turn out the number of doctors we need by 1970. It is as simple as that.

Mr. Robinson: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who has been a Minister, knows that discussions and representations between Ministers are not made public in the House.

Tetracycline

Mr. Holland: asked the Minister of Health if he will issue a circular to medical practitioners drawing their attention to the dental side effects of some of the tetracycline group of antibiotics.

Mr. Loughlin: I understand that an article in this month's issue of Prescriber's Journal will draw attention to the risk of staining of children's teeth by tetracyclines. These effects have been well reported in medical, dental and other scientific journals and warnings are included in the British National Formulary and, where appropriate, by the drug firms in their literature. My right hon. Friend does not think that a circular to doctors is necessary.

Mr. Holland: The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned an article. Can he tell us the date when it will appear?

Mr. Loughlin: I understand that it is to appear in this month's Prescribers' Journal, which the hon. Gentleman will recognise is an independent journal and is sent to every doctor.

Health Service Charges

Mr. Dean: asked the Minister of Health how much he estimates will be paid during 1967 by National Health Service patients in respect of the four new charges to be introduced on 1st January, 1967.

Mr. K. Robinson: These are charges for services outside the National Health Service. I cannot estimate what will be paid, but the total is unlikely to be large.

Mr. Dean: In spite of that reply, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether this means that he has now removed his previous policy with regard to abolishing all charges within the National Health Service, and can he further say whether he agrees with Professor Abel-Smith in his suggestion that there should be charges in other aspects of the Health Service as well?

Mr. Robinson: No, Sir. This bears no relationship to policy on charges within the National Health Service.

Deafness (Treatment)

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Health what advice he has received from the Medical Research Council on the treatment of sensory-neural deafness by fluorides; and if such treatment is available within the National Health Service.

Mr. K. Robinson: None, Sir. I understand that this treatment is not being investigated by the Medical Research Council, and I am not aware that it is being used in the National Health Service.

Mr. Pavitt: As this has shown some startling results in the United States of America, particularly at Johns Hopkins University, will my right hon. Friend use his influence with the Secretary of State for Education and Science to get the Medical Research Council to embark on research on this and make the results available to people in this country?

Mr. Robinson: I shall certainly call to my right hon. Friend's attention what my hon. Friend has just said.

Cigarette Smoking (Advertising)

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: asked the Minister of Health what further steps he will now take to limit cigarette advertisements and to discourage cigarette smoking, in view of the proven hazards to health of this addiction.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Health if he will seek power


to take action against the rapid growth of cigarette sales promotion by means of gift coupons and against Press advertising of cigarettes.

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement with regard to his recent discussions with the tobacco manufacturing companies about restraint in advertising by such manufacturers.

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: asked the Minister of Health whether he will make a statement on his negotiations with the tobacco manufacturers to control and restrict the sums spent on cigarette advertising and other forms of promotion.

Mr. K. Robinson: I would refer my hon. Friends to my reply on 20th June to my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Coe). The review of future levels of advertising and of coupon schemes which I then said we should be undertaking with the manufacturers is at an advanced stage, but I am not yet ready to make a further statement.—[Vol. 730. c. 27–8.]

Mr. Noel-Baker: Can my right hon. Friend say whether he will be ready on Friday, when we shall discuss one aspect of this subject on a Private Member's Motion? Secondly, does he not agree that it is quite illogical, having accepted the argument that advertisements are too dangerous to go on television, to allow them to continue to appear in the Press and other media?

Mr. Robinson: I am not yet in a position to say whether I shall be in a position to say something in the debate on Friday, but I think that perhaps we should await that opportunity, when we can deal with the matter at greater length.

Mr. Allaun: Has not cigarette advertising on television been more than replaced by coupon promotion to the extent of £24 million this year? Particularly in view of the alarming figures of lung cancer which my right hon. Friend gave last week, does he not think that this is deliberately frustrating the attempts to reduce cigarette smoking?

Mr. Robinson: I agree that the number of coupon brands has increased, but I think that there is a significant

difference between television advertising of cigarettes and coupon schemes, although I am discussing the question of coupon schemes with the industry.

Sir B. Janner: Will my right hon. Friend undertake that he will——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Speaker cannot hear the question.

Sir B. Janner: I hope that it was not my fault, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: No. I was not referring to the hon. Gentleman.

Sir B. Janner: I was asking my right hon. Friend if he would give an undertaking that he will do all he possibly can to stop the further production of new coupon brand cigarettes, because this is a very serious matter from the point of view of lung cancer being promoted by the smoking of cigarettes.

Mr. Robinson: I certainly deplore any form of sales promotion which brings pressure on people to increase or to maintain the number of cigarettes which they smoke. As I say, I think that we could perhaps deal with this at greater length in the debate on Friday.

Mrs. Knight: Has the Minister seen the report issued today to the effect that cigarette smoking is very much more dangerous if the air is polluted? Is he looking at this side of it as well?

Mr. Robinson: That is another matter, but air pollution and its effects have already been very exhaustively studied in medical research.

Mr. Jackson: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that while tobacco advertising is allowed it renders nugatory the work of his Department in warning the public of the dangers of smoking?

Mr. Robinson: I do not think that it quite does that, but, as my hon. Friend knows, I am concerned to see the amount of advertising of cigarettes limited and, if possible, reduced.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Chaplains

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Minister of Health what is the average salary of a full-time hospital chaplain; how


many are employed by the National Health Service; and how many have living accommodation provided in or near hospital premises.

Mr. Loughlin: The average of the salary scale is £1,327 plus a house or an allowance in lieu; 110 at 30th September, 1965; about 50.

Mrs. Short: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in view of the shortage of money for the National Health Service in general and hospitals in particular, it would be a good idea if we were to ask the Church authorities if they would bear the costs of the chaplains' service?

Mr. Loughlin: I am not sure that that would be feasible. I rather take the view that if we are providing a service to our patients—and I do not wish to be drawn into a discussion about the merits of one service against another; say, the medical as against the spiritual services—we should pay for it.

Disabled Persons

Mr. Astor: asked the Minister of Health how many hospital beds are at present occupied by disabled people who would be capable of living at home if adequate financial resources were available to them to pay for necessary non-medical care and attendance.

Mr. Loughlin: I regret that this information is not available.

Mr. Astor: While appreciating the difficulty of identifying this group of people, would the Parliamentary Secretary not agree that it is very desirable to enable and encourage these people to live at home when possible, not only for their own advantage and for the benefit of their families, but because it would release much-needed hospital beds?

Mr. Loughlin: I agree that it is desirable, where possible, for disabled people to live at home.

Dr. David Owen: Would my hon. Friend undertake to make certain that such a survey is put in hand, in view of the fact that the alarming statistics—which show the number of young chronic sick in geriatric hospitals—need positive inquiries?

Mr. Loughlin: I appreciate that there is a difficulty of identification here. I assure the House that we are constantly considering the whole issue and that we will continue to look at the whole matter to see how best we can provide a service to these patients.

Emergency Dental Services

Dr. Winstanley: asked the Minister of Health if he will investigate the possibility of establishing emergency dental services, staffed by local dental practitioners on a rota system, to provide cover during the night and at weekends in those hospitals which do not at present have a dental department.

Mr. K. Robinson: No, Sir. I have no evidence that the demand for emergency dental treatment at weekends and at night is sufficient to warrant the kind of arrangement suggested by the hon. Member.

Dr. Winstanley: Is the Minister aware that the present arrangements for dental emergencies in most parts of the country exist only on paper? Will he not agree that there are some dental emergencies—dental haemorrhage, for example—which need very much more effective provision than we have at the moment?

Mr. Robinson: I do recognise that there are serious dental emergencies, but I can assure the hon. Member that where a patient has any difficulty in making contact with his own dentist, or where he has no dentist, telephone exchanges will be supplied with information about other dentists in the area or a local rota scheme.

Mr. Braine: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he has had any recent discussion with the British Dental Association about this, since I believe that the Association always took the view that it was ready to co-operate in such a scheme provided some central premises might be provided?

Mr. Robinson: I am not aware of any recent discussion, but according to my information, in some areas where dentists have formed voluntary rota schemes for emergency treatment they have broken down for lack of patients.

Pay Beds (Charges)

Sir G. Nabarro: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that pay-beds at the General Hospital, Cheltenham, which receives constituents of the hon. Member for South Worcestershire as patients, have increased in charge since 20th July from £5 2s. per day to £5 13s. per day, or £35 14s. per week to £39 11s. per week; and, as this is prima facie contravention of the standstill conditions for prices and incomes, outlined on 20th July, what action he proposes to take in the matter.

Sir E. Errington: asked the Minister of Health why, in spite of the prices and incomes standstill, the charge for a private room at the Aldershot General Hospital has increased from £45 10s. to £57 1s. per week.

Mr. K. Robinson: I would refer the hon. Members to my reply to the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) on 14th November.—[Vol. 736, c. 8.]

Sir G. Nabarro: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why a nationalised service has been allowed to raise its prices for private beds in hospitals by such a wide margin, whereas charges in a private nursing home or hospital have been absolutely frozen? Is there any equity in this matter?

Mr. Robinson: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that my statutory duty under Section 5 of the National Health Service Act, 1946, is to ensure that charges made to private patients cover the full costs of the accommodation and service provided, and the regulations made under the Act require the rates to be revised annually, each October.

Mr. Murray: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he could save himself a lot of trouble about being asked this sort of question if beds were based on need and not payment?

Mr. Robinson: My hon. Friend will know that pay beds have been subject to review, the results of which I am at the moment considering with a view to equalising the pressure on pay beds and non-pay beds.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Would my right hon. Friend not agree that one of

the difficulties we have in the service is that we still provide private beds and that some of us on this side of the House would like to see the service do away with them?

Mr. Robinson: I am not proposing to do away with pay beds, but, as I have said, I am reviewing the whole position and hope to announce the results fairly soon.

Mr. Dean: Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise the contradiction in his earlier answer? Is he not aware that when it suits the Government they have caused employers to break their contracts?

Mr. Robinson: I received advice that, in view of the provisions of the Section, I have mentioned, and in the knowledge of what an appropriate charge should be, it was not possible for me, without risk of legal challenge, to make regulations postponing the implementation of the revised charges.

Sir G. Nabarro: In view of the unsatisfactory Ministerial reply, I beg leave to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest moment.

Commonwealth Nurses

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Minister of Health to what extent the recruiting of Canadian, Australian and New Zealand nurses to the National Health Services has been affected by the application of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

Mr. K. Robinson: I have no means of measuring this, but I am not aware that the application of the Act has materially affected recruitment of nurses from these countries.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: If I draw the Minister's attention to an individual case of difficulty, would he kindly consider it with sympathy?

Mr. Robinson: Certainly, but if my guess is right that this is the case of a New Zealand nurse, this may well be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

Frenchay Hospital, Bristol

Mr. Dobson: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the number of patients awaiting admission to Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, divided into the categories of treatment required.

Mr. Loughlin: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Dobson: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. The list is now abnormally large. It has doubled in less than four years. Would he agree that there is a need to increase the number of medical staff and nurses available at the hospital and bring forward the current building programme to meet the hospital's need?

Mr. Loughlin: My hon. Friend should be careful about statistics. He knows that Frenchay is a first-class plastic surgery unit. If the plastic surgery is excluded, there has been no increase in the waiting list in the past year. The main reason for the high number of patients awaiting plastic surgery is that a theatre for this specialty was closed in 1965 for major building work and this threw a burden on to the waiting list.

Following are the figures:


Specialty
Number of patients on the waiting list at 30th September, 1966


General medicine
9


Chronic sick
10


General surgery
473


Tonsils and adenoids
205


Other ear, nose and throat
73


Plastic surgery
2,937


Thoracic surgery
100


Neurosurgery
98


Gynaecology
710


Gastro enterology
15


Total
4,630

New Hospital, Clacton-on-Sea

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Minister of Health why the proposed completion date for the new hospital at Clacton-on-Sea has now been put back to 1975

Mr. Loughlin: No starting or completion date has so far been suggested for the new hospital.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that by 1975 the Clacton area will have expanded by the equivalent of a new town, 25 per cent. of whom will be elderly? Does he think it right that only 40 extra beds are considered sufficient for such a new town?

Mr. Loughlin: That is hardly the Question on the Order Paper. Where there are population expansions of the kind the hon. Gentleman suggests, regional hospital boards will keep constantly under review the extra needs of the area concerned.

Mr. Ridsdale: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Claybury and Goodmayes (Staff)

Mr. Iremonger: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement about staff shortages in hospitals with special reference to ancillary workers in Claybury and Goodmayes.

Mr. K. Robinson: Ease of recruitment varies in different regions and for different grades of staff, but I am informed that the two hospitals mentioned by the hon. Member have no difficulty at present in obtaining ancillary staff.

Mr. Iremonger: Is the Minister aware that there was serious threat of a strike at Claybury Hospital not so long ago and that the main difficulty was shortage of staff because of unattractive rates of pay? Will he ensure that when the freeze is ended the Confederation of Health Service Employees' claim is considered by the staff side?

Mr. Robinson: It looks as if my information is a little later than the hon. Gentleman's. I think that there were difficulties earlier, but they appear to be overcome now. The pay of ancillary staff is at present being examined by the National Board for Prices and Incomes.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Perhaps my right hon. Friend's attention has been drawn to the fact that the weekend before last Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford, had to close its operating theatre through lack of staff. As this is due to the poor wages and salaries received, cannot my


right hon. Friend do something to ensure that these wages and salaries are increased before the freeze ends?

Mr. Robinson: As I have just told the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), the question of pay is at present before the National Board for Prices and Incomes. If my hon. Friend wants a reply about the hospital he mentioned, perhaps he would table a Question.

Mr. Braine: Is it true that shortage of staff at particular hospitals is due to poor pay and conditions, or is it due, rather, to the fact that budgetary considerations make it impossible for hospitals to increase their staff, even though staff are available for recruitment?

Mr. Robinson: No. In so far as there are local shortages, there may be more than one explanation, but in the two hospitals mentioned in the Question these difficulties have been overcome.

Admissions

Mr. Gower: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the latest available waiting lists for hospitals in each of the hospital board areas of England and for Wales.

Mr. K. Robinson: The latest figures for the 15 areas concerned are for 30th June, 1966. With permission, I will circulate them in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Gower: Can the Minister say how these figures compare with the figures five years ago? Can he also say whether the position is one of uniformity or whether there are marked regional differences?

Mr. Robinson: I find it difficult to say how the figures compare with five years ago. They were slightly higher—just under 3 per cent. higher—than 12 months ago. There are very considerable differences in the number of each region, but there are, of course, differences in the sizes of the regions.

Mr. Braine: Can the right hon. Gentleman say in which specialities the situation is improving and in which it is worsening? Can he give the House some information about the factors involved? Is it a matter of a shortage of doctors,

theatre facilities, or is the demand for treatment increasing?

Mr. Robinson: I would be very glad to give any information that is in my possession if the hon. Gentleman would put down a Question. I do not know whether he has seen the remarks of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), my predecessor but one in office, about the waiting lists generally.

Following are the figures:


Hospital Board Area
Waiting list on 30th June, 1966


Newcastle
…
27,810


Leeds
…
26,015


Sheffield
…
49,775


East Anglia
…
15,370


North West Metropolitan
…
50,981


North East Metropolitan
…
33,423


South East Metropolitan
…
41,818


South West Metropolitan
…
34,111


Oxford
…
25,199


South Western
…
42,193


Birmingham
…
57,131


Manchester
…
70,516


Liverpool
…
21,674


Wessex
…
15,986


Wales
…
25,469

Fakenham (Maternity Hospital Facilities)

Mr. Hazell: asked the Minister of Health what reply he has given to the petition, signed by 6,000 residents of the town of Fakenham, North Norfolk, and its immediate area, urging the provision of maternity hospital facilities in the district; and what action he proposes to take on this matter.

Mr. Loughlin: I have sent my hon. Friend a copy of the reply. A new maternity unit to serve the Fakenham area is being provided as part of the King's Lynn district general hospital on which work is expected to start early in 1969. In addition, some patients will be able to go to the new maternity unit at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital which should be completed towards the end of next year.

Mr. Hazell: As the maternity hospitals are well over 20 miles from the township of Fakenham, could not my hon. Friend advise the regional hospital board to add a small extension to the Wells Cottage Hospital?

Mr. Loughlin: The difficulty of advising the regional hospital board on a


project of this kind is that it is now accepted that the only way to give patients correct care and atention is by means of a large maternity unit where all the services are available.

Beds

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Health why changes in hospital use and bed allocation often ensue when a senior consultant retires.

Mr. K. Robinson: Retirement is often a convenient opportunity to review the arrangement of services in hospitals in the light of the requirements at the time.

Mr. Pavitt: In view of the need for the most economical and effective use of hospital beds, will my right hon. Friend ask regional hospital boards to take a fresh look at the use of respiratory consultants' beds with a view perhaps to changing them, as the pattern of medicine has changed?

Mr. Robinson: It is not only when consultants retire that arrangements of this kind are reviewed, and I hope that hospital authorities keep them constantly under review.

Linton Hospital, Maidstone

Mr. John Wells: asked the Minister of Health what changes have been made in the numbers of the establishment at Linton Hospital, Maidstone, in the past seven years; and how far those changes take into account the shorter working week and the secondment of pupil nurses away from the hospital for 32 out of 104 weeks.

Mr. Loughlin: In September, 1959, there were 136 nurses for 286 beds, and in September, 1966, 125 for 242 beds. The number of beds has since increased to 276 and a further 21 posts have been authorised. Three additional posts were approved on account of the shorter working week. The figures exclude nurses seconded from the hospital.

Mr. Wells: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these nurses carry a far heavier burden of work-hours per nurse today than their predecessors seven years ago'? Will he look at this establishment again, and if he cannot do that will he look at the possible provision of more modern equipment for them?

Mr. Loughlin: I appreciate that all nurses are shouldering a burden and have always shouldered a burden, but the staff figures at Linton Hospital, Maidstone, are very similar to other similiar hospitals.

Oral Answers to Questions — DUCHY OF LANCASTER

Properties

Mr. Hamling: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whether he will publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT a list of all the properties under his control and the rentals over the last five years.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. George Thomson): No, Sir.

Mr. Hamling: Is my right hon. Friend aware that we are very concerned and interested in the income of the Chancellor of the Duchy?

Mr. Thomson: Yes, Sir. But my hon. Friend is asking for details which are really a matter of commercial confidence between lessees, tenants and the Duchy.

Farms (Rents)

Mr. Hamling: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what policy has been implemented on rent increases for farms in the jurisdiction of the Duchy within the last year.

Mr. George Thomson: The Duchy is acting in accordance with the line recommended by the Government in connection with its prices and incomes policy. No rent increase will be payable if it accrues within the standstill period or the period of severe restraint.

Mr. Hamling: Can my right hon. Friend say by what rate rents have increased in the last five years?

Mr. Thomson: The average increase in rents has been between one-quarter and one-third. That is over a five-year period and works out at an average increase of about 3 per cent. per annum. I ought to add that between 1870 and 1949 Duchy rents were frozen almost completely.

Oral Answers to Questions — PAYMASTER-GENERAL

10 Downing Street (Facilities)

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the Paymaster-General what use he makes of


facilities at 10 Downing Street for his official duties.

The Paymaster-General (Mr. George Wigg): Such use, Sir, as may be necessary for the performance of my duties.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Did the Paymaster-General advise Commander Courtney at No. 10 about his difficulties with the Soviet authorities, and does that come within—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must ask a question which arises out of the Question on the Order Paper.

Sir Knox Cunningham: May I ask whether that is part of the right hon. Gentleman's duties at No. 10 Downing Street?

Mr. Wigg: My conversations with Commander Courtney are confidential. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to seek further information, I suggest that he puts down a Question to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Perhaps before doing so he might consult his own Leader.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIVATE NOTICE QUESTIONS

Mr. Sydney Silverman: On a point of order. You will recall. Mr. Speaker, that this morning I sought your leave to ask a Private Notice Question of the Minister of Defence. I appreciate that I cannot ask the reasons, and I also appreciate that I cannot identify the question at this moment.
My point of order is this. Having regard to the fact that new aspects of the matter in question have recently come to light, would I be in order in repeating my request to you tomorrow, and if so, would you reconsider the matter in the light of the situation as it then is?

Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for following the convention. If anyone's Private Notice Question is refused by the Chair, it can in no way be mentioned if an hon. Gentleman wishes to raise a point of order. The Speaker's discretion in selecting or not selecting or allowing or not allowing Private Notice Questions cannot be questioned. Certainly, the hon. Gentleman may attempt to raise tomorrow by Private Notice Question the issue of which he has spoken, when I will reconsider the matter.

Mr. Silverman: I am much obliged, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS

Earnings Rule

Dr. Winstanley: I beg to give notice that on Monday, 19th December, I shall call attention to the ill effects of the earnings rule and the anomaly between widows' and retirement pensions, and move a Resolution.

Mr. Speaker: No. 30. Dr. Dunwoody.

Dr. John Dunwoody: On a point of order. I believe that my number was 5. I wonder whether No. 30 refers to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mrs. Dunwoody).

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry. I read "G. Dunwoody" and thought it was the hon. Gentleman. I did not know the Christian name of the hon. Gentleman's wife.

Deaf Children (Education)

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I beg to give notice that on Monday, 19th December, I shall call attention to the need for an improvement in the opportunities and education available to deaf children, and move a Resolution.

Industrial Towns (Central Areas)

Mr. Haftersley: I beg to give notice that on Monday, 19th December, I shall call attention to problems associated with the decaying central areas of industrial towns, and move a Resolution.

BILL PRESENTED

HOUSING SUBSIDIES

Bill to make provision with respect to financial assistance towards the provision, acquisition or improvement of dwellings and the provision of hostels; and for connected purposes, presented by Mr. Anthony Greenwood; supported by Mr. Richard Crossman, Mr. William Ross, Mr. Cledwyn Hughes, Mr. Niall MacDermot, Dr. J. Dickson Mabon, Mr. Ifor Davies, Mr. Robert Mellish, and Mr. James MacColl; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 146.]

Orders of the Day — LONDON GOVERNMENT BILL

Considered in Committee [Progress, 29th November].

[Sir ERIC FLETCHER in the Chair]

Clause 1.—(LONDON BOROUGH ELECTIONS.)

3.36 p.m.

Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter (Kingston-upon-Thames): I beg to move Amendment No. 12, in page 1, line 28, at the end to add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Kingston-on-Thames.

The Chairman: I think that it would be convenient to discuss, at the same time, Amendment No. 13, page 1, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Brent.
Amendment No. 14, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames.
Amendment No. 15, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Sutton.
Amendment No. 16, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Redbridge.
Amendment No. 18, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Enfield.
Amendment No. 19, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Bexley.
Amendment No. 20, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Bromley.
Amendment No. 21, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Barnet.
Amendment No. 27, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Haringey.

Amendment No. 28, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Ealing.
Amendment No. 29, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Hillingdon.
Amendment No. 32, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Hounslow.
and New Clauses No. 3—(Application to education authorities)—and No. 4—(Reorganisation of secondary education).

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If I may respectfully say so, Sir Eric, I think that your intimation that it would be for the convenience of the Committee to consider all these Amendments together must be treated as a polite euphemism. Although they raise two quite separate series of issues—the issue of the position of individual boroughs, and the general issue of the effect of the Bill on arrangements for education in Outer London—I accept your Ruling. Therefore, I shall seek to confine myself to the separate position of the borough dealt with in Amendment No. 12, the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames.
I understand that if my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) has the good fortune to catch your eye he may seek to open the general education issue, on which he speaks with great authority, in respect of the outer London boroughs.
I do not take this course because in the borough which I represent education is other than an issue of major importance; it most certainly is. We have several of the best schools in the country. In Kingston Grammar School, which, despite its sad lapse in producing a member of the present Cabinet, has an otherwise unblemished record, Tiffin Boys' and Tiffin Girls' Schools, we have three of the finest schools in the country. Certainly, we do not regard their future as other than a matter of the greatest possible importance.
None the less, this issue does not arise with particular sharpness in Kingston-upon-Thames for this reason. The borough has replied with its habitual courtesy to the Secretary of State for Education and Science and has told him


that however many silly circulars he issues it does not propose to damage or to destroy these schools. Therefore, their future is not in issue, as is the future of schools in some other boroughs, on the question of whether the local government elections take place in 1967.
In some boroughs—Labour controlled at the moment, but which will be Conservative controlled after the next borough elections, whenever they are—the future of some schools is truly in jeopardy, but in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, thanks to the good sense of the local authority, which is also the local education authority, this issue does not arise. It therefore seems to me more convenient that I should address a few remarks to the Committee on the broad grounds as to why this borough should be excluded from the operation of the Bill.
Last Tuesday, when we last discussed the Bill, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) and I sought the exclusion of two other boroughs—Camden and Havering—from the Bill on the ground that the abuses and incompetence which were to been seen in their present administration demanded resort to the electorates as early as possible. I do not argue this case on those grounds. I do not claim—let me make this plain to the Government Front Bench—the case on those grounds. On the other hand, when we discussed Camden the Under-Secretary sought to introduce just this argument. Therefore, it is, perhaps, appropriate that I should deal with it.
I recall to the Committee what the Under-Secretary said:
One wonders immediately why. Clearly, many of us can think of a variety of boroughs in London and in local government in other parts of the country where there are inadequacies in the way in which local government functions. One might have chosen the borough in which the right hon. Gentleman's constituency is and looked at the question of why the Conservative members on that Conservative-dominated council with a clear majority, in determining where the 10 alder-manic seats should go, decided to take nine for itself and give one to the opposition."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th November, 1966; Vol. 737, c. 403–4.]
This is a truly remarkable point for a member of the Labour Party to take. It argues a certain insensitiveness of

conscience. The Under-Secretary may be aware of the policy of the Labour Party in London where it is in control. I recall to him that in a number of boroughs, which I shall mention, the Labour Party has taken not nine but all 10 of the aldermanic seats: Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, New Ham, Hounslow, Ealing, Brent, Haringey, and Enfield. That is enough to be going on with.
Therefore, if the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that because the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames has made nine Conservative aldermen out of 10 that is a matter, to use his words, of inadequacy which might command the notice of the electors, I hope that at the next stage of the Bill he will table an Amendment to exclude the list of Labour-controlled boroughs that I have just read out. If he wants to be consistent, he might take a couple more—Lambeth and Greenwich, where they have taken nine out of the 10.
Therefore, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will either support me on this Amendment—I value support from all quarters—or admit that he took a thoroughly bad point the other night, explained only perhaps by the belated hour to which the Government saw fit to protect our proceedings.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that if Conservative and Labour-held councils have equally been guilty, the best thing is to do away with the aldermanic system altogether?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Plainly, I should be out of order if I answered that question. But I think that I am entitled to say that the point taken by the UnderSecretary—here I think I am in order—with respect to the working of the present system is a bad one. If the Under-Secretary thinks it a good one, and, as I suggested to him the other night, if he wants to put he administration of the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames to the test of the electors, we shall be delighted to oblige him.
Let the hon. Gentleman support the Amendment, and then we will test whether the electors there approve this or do not approve it, whether they regard this as an inadequacy or not. But I think that, without labouring the matter further,


for him to take that point in view of the background of the Labour Party on this matter, was one of the most remarkable aspects of the very remarkable debate that we had the other day.
3.45 p.m.
The argument in favour of removing the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames from the operation of the Bill and for taking it out of the Bill is, basically, as follows. It wants to be excluded. On 17th November, the town clerk, on the instructions of the council, wrote to the Home Secretary as follows:
"London Government Bill—London Borough Council and Greater London Council Elections.
This Council have received a report from me concerning the provisions in the above-mentioned Bill and in noting the report asked me to express to you their strong opposition to the proposed postponement of the London Borough Council elections.
Some months ago my Council was told of these proposals by the London Boroughs Committee (now the London Boroughs Association). The then London Boroughs Committee asked this authority and other London Borough Councils for their views on these proposals and were informed by this Council that although they were in favour of the Greater London Council and London Borough Council elections being held in different years they considered that the change should be effected by extending the term of office of councillors elected in 1967 to four years; subsequent elections being held triennially.
My Council still hold this view and consider that it is wrong for the terms of office of councillors to be extended from three to four years without taking into account the views of electors who understood at the time of the election that the terms of office of the councillors would be for three years expiring in May 1967.
It is, therefore, on record that this authority, speaking through its elected representatives, does not desire the postponement of its council elections, but, on the contrary, desires to be excluded from the Bill.
It may interest the Committee if I add that this decision was not taken on a wholly Conservative Party basis. When the matter was argued in the local authority, three Labour members of the council supported the sending of this letter and the exclusion of the borough from the Bill. Indeed, one of them described the Bill as anti-democratic. It is fair to say that another Labour councillor who opposed the sending of the letter and, therefore, supports the Bill none the less

made the passing observation that the Bill involved political gerrymandering. Apparently he fully understood the way in which the London Labour Party works and was, no doubt, in tune with it. I think that his intellectual honesty, though not his vote, is to be commended.
Here we have the point that the council by a large majority, speaking, constitutionally, on its own behalf and on behalf of its electors, desired to be excluded from the Bill, desired that councillors should not be given the uncovenanted benefit of an extra year for which they had not been elected, and desired, therefore, the effect of the Amendment that I am moving to be written into the Bill.
It seems to me very wrong that in a matter of this kind affecting local government, the Government should be prepared to override not only the electors, but their elected representatives as well, and to dictate to an authority whose own council wishes its elections to take place at the due date, at the predetermined date, and whose electors undoubtedly are of the same view, and that both of them should be overridden for reasons, not already very frankly avowed, of the political policy of the Labour Party.
On an earlier Amendment it was not disputed that it is perfectly practicable to exempt one borough or a number of boroughs. There is, after all, a very obvious analogy with the situation when there are by-elections. It is perfectly practicable for the electoral machinery to operate in respect of one borough or a number of individual ones. I do not think that it will be disputed again that if the Government were willing to do this they could do it.
If they are not willing to do it, they are putting themselves in the position of defying the views of the elected representatives as well as those of the electorate. To do so is totally undemocratic. It is perhaps a little ironical that the manifesto on which the present Government came to office had the heading for a part of it which reads:
Wider Democracy in the New Britain.
I wonder whether those electors who were moved by that transcendent thought realised that, in practice, the first legislation on this subject would be to produce legislatively prefabricated council lors imposed by Parliament and sheltered


from the vote of the people whom they are supposed to represent.

Sir Edward Boyle: I should like to address my remarks especially to new Clause 3, which we are discussing with the Amendment that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has so ably moved.
The new Clause says:
Section 1 of this Act shall not apply to any London borough being an educational authority within the meaning of section 30 of the London Government Act 1963,".
In the ambit of my remarks, I also include new Clause 4.
I must say that when the Department of Education and Science issued Circular 1065 on behalf of the Secretary of State, requesting local authorities to submit plans by 12th July, 1966, for the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines, I wonder if anyone then imagined that there would be no opportunity for some millions of electors to register their opinion on these plans in the spring of 1967.
I do not intend to discuss at length the general question of secondary reorganisation. I said recently, and I stand by it, that "I think that the majority of opinion in Britain today tends to feel that the age of 11 is too early in a child's life for the most decisive act of selection to be made". It was never my policy as Minister to discourage cornprehensives where they made educational sense, nor to oppose on principle the reorganisation of existing schools.
Equally, I never took the view that, so long as one was eliminating selection, one was automatically making progress; and I think that this is highly relevant to the plans put forward by the outer London boroughs, where, I believe, there should be elections and voting next year.
On 2nd March last, I said in this House:
What bothers me about the Secretary of State's speeches on this subject is his apparent belief that if we advance towards the complete elimination of all separate grammar and modern schools everywhere there will always be, in social and educational terms, a net gain and never a net loss. It is this belief that we on these benches emphatically do not share."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 1395.]
In that context, one must consider and, I believe, local opinion should have an

opportunity of voting upon the plans put forward by individual local education authorities. However much the Government may talk about a national policy, the fact remains that public education in Greater London, along with everywhere else, is still a local government service. It is just about the most important function still left to local government. In particular, it is still the responsibility of each local education authority to maintain a system of secondary schools—and here I quote from Section 8 of the 1944 Act—
… sufficient in number, character and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes.
We say that, in view of the plans which have been sent in to the Secretary of State it is of special importance that all local authorities which are local education authorities, including the outer London boroughs, should be able to express next spring their views on how this responsibility has been exercised. May I say that so far as we on this side of the Committee are concerned, that applies equally to all schools of thought on education. We are just as much concerned with the rights of the comprehensive supporter in, say, Richmond or Croydon as with the rights of the critics of some of the schemes which I shall mention.
My other initial point is this. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield West (Mr. Iain Macleod) so rightly said, this is a matter which can only be decided on a political level. I cannot agree with those who, from time to time, say piously that education can and should be kept right out of politics. I have always regarded that as nonsense. Just as I believe that our ancestors were right to talk not about "economics", but about "political economy", so my right hon. Friend was right in saying, during the Second Reading debate:
Whatever may be the arguments, in the end the future of children … in Enfield will depend on which party has the majority on the local council."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1966; Vol. 736, c. 251.]
There is no expertise which can take the place of free elections. Once one gets into the realm of choice and of what is or is not worth sacrificing for the sake of what, we are dealing with a political issue, call it what we may.
Those were the two initial points that I wanted to make. I want now to particularise and to give three or four reasons why I think that it is of especial importance that local opinion in the outer London boroughs should have the opportunity of voting next year.
The first reason which I would give is because of the implications of many of these plans for sixth-form education. As the Committee will know, we on this side have always set ourselves against any watering down of sixth form standards. More than once I have said that this must be a criterion against which reorganisation plans should be judged.
If I may remind the Committee, when we debated this question in March, I said:
…we need to attract first-class brains not just into teaching but into school teaching. It is no good revolutionising maths teaching and science teaching, as we are doing, unless schools can also recruit first-class staff who will want to spend at least some of their time teaching viable sixth form groups to the highest level. We simply cannot afford any let-up in the quality of our sixth form education, and the danger to sixth form standards is one of the most serious risks inherent in the drive to eliminate all selective schools."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1966; Vol. 725, c. 1398.]
Hon. Members opposite might be surprised to learn of some of the quarters from which those remarks of mine have been commended. There is real concern in the country at present about gifted mathematicians and about sixth form standards.
In this context, one can justly feel anxious about a number of plans brought forward for Greater London. Circular 1065 said of all-through comprehensives, in paragraph 7:
It is now clear that a six or seven form entry school can cater properly for the whole ability range and produce a viable sixth form.
Let us be clear, first, what that means in terms of figures, and I will take an example from my right hon. Friend's own constituency of Enfield. At present, the Enfield Grammar School is a four form entry boys' grammar school with roughly 750 boys on roll and a sixth form of 200, with 24 different possible groupings of subjects. That means that 70 per cent. of the fifth formers of that school are staying on into the academic sixth. That

is a very good record, though not a unique one, of which any four-form entry boys' grammar school can be proud.
The present plan is that this school, together with another school three-quarters of a mile away, should become a seven-form entry all-through comprehensive. I may say to hon. Members, if they feel moved to read the Enfield plan, that it is the longest of all the plans submitted to the Secretary of State. I hesitate to say that it is the best, but they will find the operative material at the end, where the proposals are set out very clearly, and the details are given.
4.0 p.m.
The Enfield report envisages a sixth form of 140 boys for this new combined seven-form entry all-through comprehensive. At the moment, as I have said, it is a four-form entry grammar school with a sixth form of 200. The Chief Education Officer for Enfield thinks that the way to calculate the sixth form after reorganisation is pretty easy—all one has to do is to multiply the number of forms of entry by 20. I believe that this over-simple calculation itself justifies the strongest inquiry, and justifies the importance which we attach to elections in Enfield next year, because this is desperately important.
I believe that those figures are over-simple, and if I were an elector in Enfield I would have many questions to ask. I would point out that if the new sixth form is to be an academic sixth—that is to say, a sixth form consisting of those doing two-year courses in the sixth governed by university requirements—the figure of 140 would imply that 30 per cent. of fifth formers from the whole ability range in the enlarged comprehensive were going to stay on into the sixth. But I look on this figure as inconceivable, because, after all, on the Ministry's own statistics, even in the South-East of England, which is the most favourable part of the country, only about 30 per cent. of children are voluntarily staying on for a full fifth year; so, as I say, the notion of 30 per cent. of the whole ability range from the fifth form staying on to do a full academic course in the sixth is really inconceivable.
In that case, what does the figure of 140 mean? It means that some of the 140 will be academic sixth formers, and some will not. Some will be staying on


for one year in the sixth form and will need a different kind of sixth form course from that given at present at the Enfield Grammar School. This is a highly important point which ought to be thrashed out at election time in Enfield, namely, just how big the academic sixth form in the new combined Enfield School is really expected to be.
I hope that no one on the benches opposite will think that this is a false point. If we are to have a watering down of the academic sixth form in many of the finest of our schools, this will make it far harder for a great many boys and girls to compete for Oxbridge scholarships with those at independent schools, and I cannot see how that can be the objective of the party opposite. If I wanted to be abusive I would say that when I look at some of these plans I think that they might be described as the "minor public schools' charter". I cannot feel that this is something which should appeal to the Committee as a whole.
But still worse is the fact that some authorities are looking at six forms of entry not just as a minimum, but as a norm which can be temporarily disregarded. Circular 10/65 looked on six forms of entry for all-through comprehensives as the absolute minimum, but if one looks at the Ealing plan, one sees that in the Acton area they are contemplating a four-form entry all-through comprehensive for a considerable period. They say that since it will not be possible to enlarge Acton County School to a six-form entry school and have the accommodation available before September, 1969, at the earliest, it is not feasible to have a six-form entry at the school from September, 1966. The authority therefore proposes to limit the intake at Acton County School to a four form entry and "as soon as possible to submit to the Department for inclusion in the 1968–69 building programme a proposal to enlarge the school from a four-form entry to a six-form entry". This is a point which ought to be fought out as hard as possible.
Although I have doubts about a six-form entry comprehensive, it may in certain circumstances be viable, but a four-form all-through comprehensive is just a fraud on the public. When I see the way in which, in a number of these plans, when the Secretary of State says that six or seven

forms of entry ought to be the minimum, the authorities then say that they can temporarily have four or five forms, I cannot help being reminded of Moliere's play "The Miser" in which Harpagon, the miser, says, "We have ten guests for dinner. If there is enough for eight, there is enough for ten, so we shall need four large soups". That is the way in which a number of authorities seem to approach this problem of reorganisation.
The same thing will happen in Ealing itself over the five-year schools followed by a sixth-form college. I have no objection in principle to this form of organisation, but I would want to fight very hard in Ealing the proposal to have a three-form entry school in a part of Ealing catering for the age range 11 to 16. This is intolerable for any able boy or girl who may be concerned, and I find it hard to believe that any responsible parent will put up with that.

Mr. Lubbock: As schemes have to be submitted to the Secretary of State for his approval, and if they do not confirm with Circular 1065, is not the Secretary of State bound to reject them?

Sir E. Boyle: That is a fair question, and I have two points to make in reply. First, I agree that the Secretary of State rejected part of the Manchester scheme, though not as much as some of us would have liked, and also part of the Liverpool scheme. I hope that this will be done not only in respect of the schemes which I have been mentioning, but also one in another to which I shall refer. If it is not, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in censoring the Secretary of State for Education and Science for his omission.
But this matter is also the responsibility of the boroughs who have put these schemes forward, and I am saying that, quite irrespective of the Secretary of State's action, the electors should have a chance of expressing their verdict on these schemes in local elections next year.
The second general matter of concern which I wish to mention is that in a number of these schemes I am struck by the disregard of the legitimate interests of the primary schools. This is a point that we on this side have always recognised. Indeed it is one of the major problems of


secondary reorganization—how to extend opportunity, and how to defer selection, while, at the same time, not denying badly needed resources to the primary schools.
Here I mention, in particular, the scheme for the Borough of Hillingdon, which is contemplating an extra year added on to the infant school period, and an extra year of primary education until 12. On reading the report from the borough, it seems to me that very little attention has been paid to how the real problems of the primary schools can be met. It is not until the last page of the report that one sees it admitted that the main problem of teacher recruitment will occur in the infant schools, and nothing is said about how the borough proposes to deal with this matter.
Besides, this is not only a question of the quantity of teachers. If I were an elector in Hillingdon, I would emphasise very much the need for a different type of teacher if it is proposed to extend primary school education from 11 to 12. The freeing of primary schools from the 11-plus examination should, after all, lead to a broader curriculum, including the introduction of science and foreign languages. This means better qualified teachers and smaller classes which are particularly necessary if the top forms of primary schools are to consist of 11 to 12-year olds instead of 10 to 11-year olds.
Another point relevant to a number of plans—and again I could quote Enfield—is that I am struck with the number of proposals in Greater London which involve quite a considerable amount of extra resources, extra extensions and buildings. One constantly comes across words like, "Some extension or adaptation work may prove to be necessary to provide for a mixed school.… This should be dealt with from the minor capital works programme.… Some internal adaptations may prove necessary within the minor capital works programme.… Additional classrooms will have to be provided through the minor capital works programme". This, again, is a point of crucial importance to the primary schools in the Greater London boroughs and, I may add, to other authorities as well.
As we all know, there is great pressure on the minor capital works programme. A small amount on this programme can make a great deal of difference to many primary schools, both in the cities and in the counties. Many of us are deeply concerned at the effect of all these reorganisation plans upon that share of the minor works programme which may be spared for primary improvements.
My third point concerns what we have always called the "botched-up" schemes. In view of what was said recently in a national newspaper I want to make it clear that I am not one of those who condemn every reorganisation plan involving an existing school as botched up. That would not be fair or accurate. But we have some real botch-ups in the plans proposed for Greater London. I hope that the Committee will follow my example of reading the reports of a number of these plans.
If so, hon. Members will doubtless agree that it is a bad scheme which substitutes for the names of schools numbers or letters—numbers as in Manchester, or letters as in Haringey. We all look forward to the day when we have a considerable number of hon. Members who have come here from purpose-built, all-through comprehensive schools, but I venture to express the view that it will be a long time before we have an hon. Member from "School F" or "School Group 13".
When I look at what is proposed for Haringey, I wonder whether this is what the Prime Minister can possibly have meant when he made the famous speech about his "dead body" in 1963. Let me give two instances. School F consists of Belmont and Downhills Schools, which are a little over 1¼ miles apart. The Report says that the new Downhills buildings will be within easy walking distance of Belmont and the annexe, that the Roman Catholic School of St. Ignatius and Sir Thomas Moore are approximately 1½miles apart and that the Church authorities hope to bring St. Ignatius up to standard by a series of minor works lasting over three or four years.
I do not want to labour the point, but not many of us feel happy—and there is little local opinion that feels happy—about the junction of two schools 1¼ or 1½ miles apart.
Still talking of botch-ups, I am afraid that easily the worst that I have come across—and I have many reasons to regret this—is to be found in the Borough of Bexley. It seems to be one of the most remarkable plans put forward by any authority. I want to give two examples. First, there is the proposal to amalgamate Erith Grammar School and the two Northumberland Heath secondary modern schools, only half a mile away. Not only will it be necessary for two busy roads to he crossed ddby pupils and staff "when movement between the grammar school and secondary modern schools is necessary or desirable"; two and a half pages of the Report are devoted to putting forward principles to be followed "to obtain a viable arrangement which would avoid excessive travelling of staff and pupils". It is indeed hard to see how this will be one school in anything but name.

Mr. James Wellbeloved: Is the right hon. Gentleman quoting from the first or second report?

Sir E. Boyle: This is the most recent report. The original plan was to implement this proposal in 1966. At least we now have some reprieve, which will enable this plan to be fought.
4.15 p.m.
When I visited Erith my greatest concern was how it could conceivably be possible to join these three school buildings to form a single school. At the least there must be a proper balance of accommodation. If the two secondary modern schools are to form the lower part of the school, at least there must be proper provision for those doing science at 11 or 12 years of age—because we cannot have a situation in which, whenever boys or girls over the whole range of ability need certain provision, they have to travel half a mile to get it. There must be a reasonable balance of accommodation, and to my certain knowledge there is not in this case. That is what causes me real concern.
But there is something more remarkable about the Bexley plan which I hope may yet be reconsidered. It is proposed to have schools for pupils of 11–16 years in the Welling and Crayford areas, and the Report says that these schools cannot be expected to develop sixth forms until well into the 'seventies. Even in 1975

or 1976, these schools are unlikely to be able to offer a full range of advanced level subjects and some pupils must be expected to transfer at 16+ to other schools.
Now, as I have said, I am not dogmatically opposed to experiments with junior colleges and with the sixth-form college idea, but of all the bogus and botched-up plans this bogus plan for sixth-form education is the worst. The idea is that boys and girls who have been at these 11–16 schools will not all be able to get academic sixth form places, and so a number will have to go on to the Bexley Heath Secondary schools, which themselves are being joined into one all-through comprehensive. But these schools would not as yet have developed an academic sixth form of thir own. It is really intolerable that children at the age of 16 should be transferred for sixth form work to a school which has not achieved an indigenous sixth form of its own, yet this is what is seriously proposed for part of the Borough of Bexley.
It is also suggested—perhaps a little frivolously—that the technical college "will be chosen by some students for full-time study." If this plan gets as far as the Secretary of State I hope that he will turn it down. Such a proposal should never have been put forward in the first place, and the electors should have an opportunity of expressing their views on it as soon as possible.
Finally, many of us feel that while in some areas—certainly in some counties and some cities—there has been a real attempt at consultation, this is not true everywhere. Much concern has been expressed by teachers. The Conservatives on the Bexley Borough Council were right in refusing to support any scheme which did not have the backing of teachers. This is not surprising. The section of the Report headed "Report on Consultation" does not mention the views of teachers. It says:
The opinions expressed by members of the Working Party were not always unanimous, and it is thought that the views of teachers are best expressed through the medium of their advisory council.
That remark rather reminds me of Sir Sidney Lee's euphemistic judgment on King Edward VII, that he was "a hearty eater who never toyed with his food." In plain fact, the advisory council has


stated that it cannot accept the plan put forward by the borough.
I mentioned four separate reasons why we believe that the Greater London boroughs should give their electors the opportunity to express their opinion in elections next year. These reasons are our concern about sixth-form standards in many areas; the lack of concern among many boroughs for the interests of the primary schools; the number of botch-ups, and the concern felt by so many teachers.
Hon. Members opposite may say, "What is the point of continued controversy and uncertainty at a time when the national policy is known?" My first answer IS that we should never forget that the Secretary of State has no power to compel local education authorities to submit plans, least of all for the whole of their areas. I do not go along with the advice given in a letter in The Times this morning, which says that guidance by professional men
must … be consonant not only with the law of the land but also with general Government policy.
I object to that doctrine on both constitutional and practical grounds. I have always been a political pluralist. I have never believed that power and influence in our society should be monopolised by a Government operating through their majority in Parliament and I was greatly impressed, when younger, by the early writings of Professor Laski on this subject—writings which, I believe, even their author never satisfactorily refuted. Secondly, as a practical matter surely our political system works best, and the wisest decisions are taken, when everyone "fights his corner," as he is entitled to do. I have never urged a local authority to defy the Secretary of State, but I have stood for the rights of local education authorities not to put forward schemes that they themselves feel to be educationally unsound. I have said the same to governors of aided schools.
Anyway, to be thoroughly practical, I suggest that there is no reason to suppose that the Secretary of State will turn down all plans that do not accept a commitment here and now to reorganise the whole of a local authority area. In other words, I believe that many of these worst botched-up schemes are totally unnecessary as well as undesirable; and what-

ever the pressure which the Secretary of State may be under from a section of his party I believe that it will be a very long time before he himself takes a final decision to put a time limit on the response to his circular, and says that the abolition of "separatism"—the total abolition—has to be completed within a definite time.
Finally, there is one thing which is worse than uncertainty—that is, doing anything which is damaging to education. We on this side of the Committee reserve the right not only to fight, but to reverse, any scheme which must prove educationally damaging, or just not viable, and we shall act on the principle that many of us will recall from doing Latin unseens, that if a plan "does not make sense, it cannot be right".

Mr. William Molloy: It is always a matter of great interest to listen to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), particularly when he speaks about education. It depends on which part of the speech one may listen to whether one might come to the wrong conclusion. He has gained the reputation of being the most notorious political figure on education in this country—a veritable political Vicar of Bray—I think that his views are likely to confuse people.
The right hon. Gentleman is at times a very strong advocate for comprehensive schools, but after he has reasserted the fact that he is a strong advocate for them, he surreptitiously slips in "cracks" and little contributions which destroy his previous argument. His "crack" about Professor Laski was more applicable to himself than to anyone else.
With regard to the London Borough of Ealing, it is true that two schemes were proposed and that in both of these schemes the position in Acton and Southall would be the same.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to Acton. The probability is that the right hon. Gentleman knows no more about the situation in Acton and Southall, about the physical educational availabilities and equipment there, than he does about the situation in Ealing generally, and he might have done some good had he made some physical examination of the problem.
There is very deep cut and thrust—not merely in relation to education—on


the political scene within the council chamber, and in committees on the London Borough of Ealing. Surely this is right and proper. There is no bitterness. There is not the sort of rancour which sometimes exists in this House. There is certainly not the picture which the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) sometimes paints. Whether they be Tories or Socialists, there has been a great deal of tolerance on both sides of the political fence in Ealing on the difficult question of education.
The most ridiculous and totally incorrect comment which has ever been made about education in Ealing was that made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), who said that the parents of Ealing were at war with their council. That was quite a normal, grossly ridiculous, extravagant and, quite frankly, impertinent exaggeration, we expect on the part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Handsworth seemed to favour a scheme which affected the central part of Ealing, but he did not like the scheme which was in favour of Acton and Southall. Parents in Acton and Southall have no complaints to make. They are all in favour of the proposal. It is the parents of some parts of the old municipal Borough of Ealing from whom complaints are forthcoming. What I am saying is important, because of the ridiculous and extravagant statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone, who said that parents were at war with their council.
In point of fact, what was at stake was that a number of parents who were violently opposed to the principle of comprehensive education—though not wholly openly they were opposed to both the Tories and the Socialists in Ealing, because the Tories and Socialists support the principle of comprehensive education—saw it as their right to seek redress in a court of law in order. Their case was examined and they were defeated. But this did not represent an overwhelming majority of parents in Ealing, and I think that the record should be put right.

Mr. Anthony Royle: It might not have been an over-

whelming majority of parents in Ealing, but if it was only a small group then surely it is their right to have the opportunity next year to vote. So the hon. Gentleman is right in what he says.

Mr. Molloy: They had a wonderful opportunity in March of this year. This was one of the biggest issues—and I will deal with this question in a moment—during the General Election. At a joint meeting of the Liberal candidate, the Tory candidate and myself on the whole question of comprehensive education, I discovered that we all agree on principle. There was no argument about it. The only difference that divided the parties was that the Tories and Liberals were on one side regarding primary and religious education, and I was on the other. I think that all men should be united on any principle so long as it is a good one.
To explain my point, I will, if necessary, have to go back to the debate which took place at the time. I see no reason why children of a tender age who attend primary schools should be necessarily divided for ever—or perhaps, might for an initial period go to a primary school, with children of the same sort of religion. But then, certainly, later on, they should all be together to get to understand one another. Whether they are Catholics, Methodists, or member of any other religious denomination, they should be together. After a certain period they should not be separately educated along any particular religious lines. I would hope that the Committee would agree with that principle.
When the principle of comprehensive education was accepted by all the parties in the Borough of Ealing, there was no difficulty in agreeing immediately to find out which would be the best system to operate in Ealing. It was, therefore, decided to establish a working party. There was no argument against a working party being established. It consisted roughly, of 16 members. As the Labour Party was the majority party, it had six members, the Conservatives had four, and there were four representatives from four teachers' organisations, and there were two headmasters.
They said that they would not outline any scheme, that they would do nothing about schemes for comprehensive education immediately, but that, as a responsible committee, they would first of


all visit every school in the Borough of Ealing. They did so and they spoke to the headmasters, to the headmistresses and to the staffs. They asked them what their problems were. The committee was united, and it generally sought information which would assist it when the time came to devise a scheme of comprehensive education.
That was done amicably, because there was no dichotomy between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in Ealing. These were ordinary councillors, members of the teachers' organisations, and so on, and they were not paid for what they did. That being so, I am sure that all hon. Members will want to compliment them on their energy and interest in carrying out a very difficult examination, which took them some time.
4.30 p.m.
This committee then tried to devise a scheme that would be reasonably acceptable to all its members. Unfortunately, that was not to be. The divisions of opinion on some schemes cut right across both political parties in the committee. Some Tories and Socialists would support one embryo scheme and oppose another, while other Tories and Socialists went the other way. That is a sensible and reasonable way of working. They were able to act in that way because the principle had been adopted.
I sometimes get annoyed when some hon. Members opposite seem to suggest that the Tories in Ealing or anywhere else were insincere when they said that they accepted the principle, or when, later, something happened to cause them to change their minds. The real degree of difference has related to particular schemes, and not to the principle. That should be said, because there are in Ealing those who do not support any form of comprehensive education, although that view is directly opposed to both Tory and Socialist thinking in the borough.
After a great deal of examination—and all this work started in 1965—there emerged schemes A and B. In other words, the committee could not arrive at a unified scheme. Quite remarkably, when the specialist committee voted it was split right down the middle-fifty-

fifty. There followed discussion on how to resolve the dilemma, as the committee could not then submit a report to the council. It was unanimously agreed to refer both schemes to a special committee of the education committee, known as the schools sub-committee. The subcommittee had 18 members—10 from the Labour Party, six from the minority Conservative Party, and teachers' representatives and representatives of the Churches. They finally came down in favour of scheme B, and we are now hoping that the Minister, too, will approve it.
The point of what I am saying is that during the period involved there has been good work done by all members of the education committee, irrespective of party. Good contributions have also been made by members of the teaching profession and the church representatives. It would be silly if Parliament were now to dissipate the good will that has existed among all those people in trying to evolve a system of education for the borough.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger: Surely the hon. Member will agree that everything he says is a most powerful argument for letting the people most concerned in this matter have a chance of saying something about it.

Mr. Molloy: Had the hon. Member been content to listen, he would have heard me deal with that point.
I recognise that very many hon. Members may have no knowledge at all of local government work—that has been revealed in some speeches—or, if they have spent some time in local authority work as councillors, they do not seem to have learnt much. It is wrong to say that on every issue there is always a good deal of bitterness between Tory and Socialist councillors.

Sir E. Boyle: As it happens, I am a co-opted member of a local education authority. We submitted, with no party division, an answer to the Secretary of State which will provide comprehensive education in one area immediately, and which, in three places, will mean comprehensive education in a few years. We did not think that it made sense to commit ourselves to plan for the whole county. I think that we were perfectly


right to do as we did, and not to act further.

Mr. Molloy: It would be wrong for me to comment on the details of what the right hon. Gentleman says, because I have not studied his plan. Indeed, I have already said that it is rather "thick" of him to comment on our plan for Ealing without having studied it.
All the way along there has been a remarkable degree of collaboration by both the political parties, the teachers' associations and the representatives of the Churches in the genuine interests of the people of Ealing. That had been going on for a number of years. I am willing to admit that the complaints about and the opponents of the principles of comprehensive education have not necessarily come from the Conservative Party. They—the Tories—are either too shy, or too crafty, or do not have the guts to say that they have changed their minds. Much opposition has come wholly from a small force of people who are against the principle.
But once this particular scheme had been devised, the Conservatives in Ealing—quite within their rights in our view—opposed it. That was their right—but they were never opposed to the principle. I can quite understand that some of their arguments have appealed to people right across the political board, while others accept scheme B which has been advanced by the specialist committee that examined the issue.
The name of the chairman of the Ealing Education Committee has appeared in the newspapers and other places in connection with an alleged leak, and letting the cat out of the bag about what the Labour Party intended to do about postponing the elections. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) is not here at the moment, but I recall that originally he thought that the blame for this terrible and iniquitous remark lay with the leader of the Ealing Borough Council. When I intervened to tell him that he was wrong, the right hon. and learned Gentleman acknowledged his error, but then went on to commit another error.
In that debate I said:
I expect the right hon. and learned Gentleman to come here tomorrow to correct the

allegation which he has made against the leader of the Ealing Borough Council.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman at once replied:
The hon. Member need not wait: it was the Labour leader of the education committee."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1966; Vol. 736, c. 357.]
It was not. Doubtless the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be here tomorrow to correct that lapsus lingua, as he demanded previously with regard to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
It was the chairman of the Ealing Education Committee, discussing all sorts of things with parents at a public meeting, and probably answering questions from people of all political parties and none. The big debate about the forthcoming elections had been going on for years. Indeed, early in 1965 the Acton Gagette ran an article on this issue and quoted two members of the Labour Party, Councillor Michael Elliott and my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), who were both Ealing councillors, as disagreeing with some of the proposals that were coming up.
That is quite natural in the Labour Party. There is always healthy argument, outside as well as inside. [Laughter.] It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to laugh, because this ruins their case about secret and villainous organisation. There was public debate and it was reported in the newspapers a couple years ago. The newspapers pointed out that Councillor Elliott had a suggestion, which has now been incorporated to a great degree in the Bill.
There is nothing odd about that. In the Labour Party it is quite possible for a person to come to one of our ward meetings and put down a proposal which ultimately finds its way to the House of Commons; and when we are in power, it may find its way to the Statute Book. There is nothing wrong in that. I know that it is difficult for right hon. and hon. Members opposite to understand this, but that is how things go on in the Labour Party. That is the normal channel of democracy, which is always kept in the open.
When this issue was discussed, it was done in the open. I know that the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. lain Macleod) laughs, but it is the laugh of the defeated. His laugh is the


equivalent of whistling in the dark. This whole issue was not merely discussed in public: it was reported in public—unless hon. Members opposite are saying that the Acton Gazette is a villainous, secret newspaper. They cannot have it both ways.

Mr. A. Royle: The hon. Member bases cart of his argument on a quibble. At col. 357 on 15th November, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said:
The hon. Member need not wait: it was the Labour leader of the education committee."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1966; Vol. 736, c. 357.]
The hon. Member just said that it was not the. Labour leader of the education committee and that it was the chairman of the education committee. Is not the chairman of the education committee a member of the Labour Party, in which case it was the Labour chairman of the education committee?

Mr. Molloy: No, it was not. The hon. Member does not understand. Let me educate him in local government. There is an education committee. It has a chairman. On the one side there is the Tory leader, and on the other side the Labour leader. Looking after the whole committee is the chairman. That is not difficult to understand. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone quoted the Labour leader.

Mr. A. Royle: To which party does the chairman belong?

Mr. Molloy: It was not the Labour leader. It was the chairman of the committee. The chairman of the committee and the Labour leader are not the same person. The two posts are filled by two different people. This might sound complicated to Conservative Members, but if they struggle with it they will understand.
Before I had to divert to give that short course in local government education to hon. Members opposite, I was saying that when the statement was made it was done in public. It was reported in public. A great debate had been going on throughout London. My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. R. W. Brown) took a deputation to see the then Conservative

Home Secretary to put certain proposals before him. Some of those proposals were ultimately accepted. People knew all about this before the 1964 General Election and before the 1966 General Election. They knew full well that this had been going on and that it had not been finally decided.
Therefore, when right hon. and hon. Members opposite say that this was done for political reasons, they are acknowledging, if it exists, a remarkable power of prescience attributable to the Labour councillors who think that they will win the elections in 1968. They proved it by winning the elections for the Greater London Council, and we proved it by winning two General Elections one after another.
4.45 p.m.
Many right hon. and hon. Members opposite know that this was—I know that it does not apply to the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter)—an administrative issue the difficulties of which were examined by both Tory and Labour councillors; and that some Conservative councillors as well as Labour councillors agree with the proposals of the Bill.
In addition to the argument and debate which was going on at the time, one of the proposals was not that the London borough elections should be delayed, but rather that the G.L.C. elections should be delayed. There were conflicting points of view within the Labour Party during the great debate as to which it should be. At the time, I was involved in Fulham Borough Council as its leader and later as a member of Hammersmith Borough Council. I want to be completely fair to Conservative councillors. They examined the proposals and there were differences of opinion among them. But all the people to whom I have spoken agreed that there was need for thorough examination to prevent the administrative and political snarl-up for which we were heading.
Right hon. and hon. Members opposite know very well that what was involved was an examination of a tricky administrative problem which could have defaced political standards in London by the fact that we were not prepared to examine the difficulties that were involved and did


not have the courage to produce something like the Bill. We knew the sort of charges that would be levelled.
If hon. Members opposite had been putting up proposals, we on this side would have examined them. Hon. Members opposite would, no doubt, have said, "If we push this through, you know what the Labour Party will say. They will accuse us of gerrymandering and the rest." At some stage, however, we must examine the reactions of the people who are deeply involved.
From my experience, quite a number of Conservative councillors, not only in Westminster Council, but in many parts of London, support the aims and objects of the Bill. I must be equally honest and say that some Labour councillors are apprehensive about some of its proposals. The debate which is going on has cut across all political frontiers. There has been a big political debate. It has been carried on in London and on the Floor of the House. That is how it ought to be. The essential proposal of the Bill has not, as right hon. and hon. Members opposite claim, derogated in any way from the principles of democracy. Indeed, it has enhanced them.

Wing Commander Sir Eric Bullus: I wish to deal with Amendment No. 13, which seeks to exempt the London Borough of Brent from the provisions of the Bill. With equally good material, I presume to hope that I may make as good a case for the Borough of Brent as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) made for his London borough.
Of all the London boroughs, Brent has strong claims for exemption from the provisions of the Bill. I have no desire in a short speech to repeat my Second Reading speech, which, I thought, was rather powerful, but it did not do the trick and the Bill got a Second reading. I hope, therefore, that I might be satisfied with half a loaf and secure the carrying of my Amendment.
From time to time, I am told with others that I should forget Wembley and think about the London Borough of Brent, but this is very difficult. I intend to show how very difficult it is for some of my constituents under a Labour-con-

trolled Borough of Brent. Neither Wembley nor Willesden desired the merger of two years ago. Wembley was Tory-controlled, with the lowest rate in the country and its council-housing account in balance. Willesden, half as big again, was Labour dominated, with high rates and a £500,000 council-housing deficit. Wembley had little chance in the subsequent election but obtained a very sizeable minority and has since won by-elections. Today, in Brent, the rates are high and the loss on the Brent housing revenue account this year amounts to £750,000—a 10d. rate. No wonder we want elections in Brent.
I have spoken of the housing position and I have spoken in this Chamber before of the public inquiry into the compulsory purchase orders in my constituency in the Chalkhill and Barnhill Road development. The action of the Brent Council in grabbing these properties affected every ratepayer, because to subsidise these council property ratepayers will have to find £218,400 per year, equivalent to nearly a 3d. increase in rates. No wonder Brent wants the opportunity to vote Tory. The large majority of these houses and flats have been handed over by the Brent Council to the Greater London Council—both are Labour-controlled—and two-thirds of the people living in the Chalkhill and Barnhill area do not come from Brent at all.
I attended the public inquiry into the compulsory purchase orders on 22nd September and no mention was there made of the Socialist council's intention to seek further properties in the area. Yet only two weeks later the Brent Council announced that it was seeking to acquire further large blocks of property in the same roads. No wonder that Brent wants elections at once.
I turn to education. The hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) represents a part of the Borough of Brent. I am sorry that he is not in his place. I confess that I did not warn him that I would speak on his remarks because I naturally assumed that he would be here. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] But I have no compunction in referring to him, because I shall not be unkind. I am not an unkindly person, but I must take up some of his remarks.
In his Second Reading speech the hon. Member denied that the Minister of


State, Department of Education and Science, had rejected the first comprehensive scheme for Brent. I did not want to bring the Minister into the argument. He has been very kind. He received a deputation of about 30 parents from the Borough of Brent and twice gave of his valuable time. In addition, he has been to the Central Lobby and addressed overflow meetings there. They are very impressed at least with his kindness, if not with h is decisions. Perhaps in an intervention today he will tell us whether he rejected that scheme.
I wanted the hon. Member for Willesden, East to be referred to a letter in his own local newspaper from one of the parents from the parents' organisation, one of those who came to see the Minister of State. She referred to my remarks and the denial by the hon. Member for Willesden, East. She writes:
I would say to Alderman Freeson that his memory is extremely short. The first scheme was due to start in 1966.
I am glad to see the hon. Member for Willesden, East entering the Chamber. Perhaps he would like to know that I said that I had not advised him of my intention to refer to his remarks but that I had no compunction about referring to them because I had nothing unkind to say.
The letter from this parent, writing in the hon. Member's own local newspaper, continues:
A new scheme is presumably planned for 1967. The first scheme involved children shuttling back and forth over the North Circular Road at Wesley Road School. This was rejected and it is not in the proposed scheme for 1967.
This confirms that there has been an original scheme. Whether this is the same scheme violently amended is splitting hairs but the first scheme was not accepted.
Maybe Alderman Freeson honestly feels that the first scheme was not rejected, but as far as the parents understand it, from the mere fact that the 1966 scheme is not in operation it would appear that it was rejected, and well and truly rejected at that.
She adds:
I can only hope a miracle will happen to allow us parents and residents to have our local elections in 1967.
I would call in aid a prominent member of the council, sitting on the same council as the hon. Member for Willesden, East, the Leader of the Conservative minority. It is not such a small

minority. Speaking at a meeting the week before last, he referred to the blackmail that is being used to force comprehensive education on the country. My right hon. Friend referred to this and said that it was not blackmail because it can be resisted. But here is evidence that the Socialist Government and the Socialist-controlled local authorities advise and guide as though it were the law of the land that the Secretary of State and Minister of State have power to withhold these grants from local authorities.
The leader of the opposition on the Brent Council described the education scheme proposed in Brent as hotch-potch and an emergency measure, thereby supporting what I have said. He said that a six-month limit has been set to produce the scheme and that in his view only a select group of teachers had been consulted. He said that the public had been told of the plan, once formed, but not with the idea of being able to alter it by either suggestions or advice. Mr. Lee, Leader of the opposition, himself a headmaster, had a proposal but the council was not prepared to consider it.

Mr. Reginald Freeson: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member would tell us what is that proposal. It was certainly never presented to the education committee or to the council.

Sir E. Bullus: The Leader of the Opposition wanted to see compulsory education until the age of 16, when pupils who wanted to do so should be able to study liberal subjects, using grammar school sixth form premises. This is the suggestion made by him. He disagreed with the suggestion that new buildings would attract teachers of a higher standard and he said that the children in Brent would not necessarily be getting the best education under the new system and that a school like East Lane would be down-graded to a junior high school. No wonder that in Brent we want the elections next year.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) has spoken of the comprehensive scheme in his own borough. I have teachers who are constituents of mine who teach in the Borough of Ealing and who have written to me fearing for


education under the scheme from the teacher point of view, and suggesting that if this scheme is forced through in Ealing several teachers will not be prepared to teach in Ealing and will apply to be removed elsewhere.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): Blackmail.

Mr. Molloy: Will the hon. Member tell me who are the teachers who will not carry out what the council proposes? I should be interested. The teacher organisations, and particularly the N.U.T., which supply the overwhelming majority of the teachers for the London Borough of Brent, support scheme B completely.

Sir E. Bullus: The right hon. Lady says "Blackmail", but there is no question of blackmail if a woman teacher does not desire to teach in a school with which she has no sympathy. She has a right to apply to go to another school. Or does the Labour Party want direction of labour?
The hon. Member for Willesden, East spoke about the huffing and puffing over education and about democracy. I have a letter from a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell), the Secretary of the Sudbury Court Residents' Association. A copy was sent to the local newspaper. The letter refers to the huffing and puffing. The letter says:
… we too can raise no enthusiasm for the kind of huffing and puffing' which goes on on both sides, not only in the House but also in our own council chamber.
5.0 p.m.
The Honorary Secretary of the Sudbury Court Residents' Association goes on to huff and puff himself on behalf of his Association and points out that when the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) had said that only members of the Conservative Party were objecting to the proposal, that was not so because the Sudbury Court Residents' Association also opposed it.
I return once again to the thing that wrankles very much with me, which is the question of re-warding. It is one reason why in Brent we want the elections to be held at once, for if they are postponed, the re-warding will have taken

effect, and we are very unhappy indeed about the proposed re-warding. The right hon. Lady said on Second Reading, when referring to what I had said about the Commissioner's advice being rejected by the Home Secretary:
… the Commissioner … said, 'This is the scheme that I would prefer, but there is another scheme, if the scheme that I would prefer is not accepted.' … the hon. and gallant Gentleman has been alleging for some time in Questions in the House that my right hon. Friend has not paid heed to the views of the Commissioner."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1966; vol. 736, c. 358.]
Mr. Verney, the Commissioner, in fact said:
My first recommendation is that no change be made to the existing wards.
He stated that in paragraph 23 and, in paragraph 44, he stated:
With the reservation that I do not regard the change as productive of any improvement on the existing warding, but rather the contrary, if the policy of uniformity is approved I prefer the Council scheme to that put forward by the Conservatives.
That is the alternative. He categorically stated:
My first recommendation is that no change be made to the existing warding.
As for the Minister's remarks, that
… we shall have wards with equal representation rather than, in future, a differentiation in the wards between those which belonged to the former borough of Wembley and those which belonged to the former borough of Willesden."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1966; Vol. 736, c. 359.]
Mr. Verney stated, in paragraph 23(e):
If uniformity is the proper aim, the Borough of Brent should be reconsidered as a whole".
And in paragraph 23(g) he went even further and stated:
If the Council's scheme were adopted in essence it should, in my opinion, be modified my the division of the proposed South Kenton ward into two single-member wards, and this would wholly defeat the intention to achieve uniformity.
My case regarding the proposed re-warding has, I suggest, been made out and that is why we in Brent want the elections.

Miss Bacon: I do not have the Commissioner's report with me, but I remember clearly, as I explained on Second Reading, it being most unusual for a commissioner conducting an inquiry of this kind to mention a second scheme.


There is usually only one recommendation. This is the only case of which I am aware where there has been an alternative scheme; a second choice, so to speak. To that extent it was unusual and I believe that Mr. Verney perhaps thought that there might be considerable objection to his first choice, so he gave an alternative scheme.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary considered the alternative as being preferable to the first proposal, in that as the years would have gone by everybody would have been able to point to a part of the Borough of Brent and say, "This is the old Wembley" and "This is the old Willesden" because the old Wembley would have had bigger wards with three councillors while Willesden would have had smaller wards with two councillors. We consider that, from that point of view, it would be better to have a borough where there was not that distinction.

Sir E. Bullus: I accept that that is what the right hon. Lady believes. I do not believe the same thing. I suggest that it is unusual indeed to have been given an alternative and I will explain why I believe there was an alternative, remembering that I endeavoured to do that on Second Reading. It is because the same Commissioner was at Northampton, and because he saw how his recommendations were treated there. [Interruption.] He thought that the Government would want a second opinion and he gave them such an opportunity. There is no slur on the Commissioner at all. He was badly treated over his recommendations regarding Northampton and we had a censure debate on that subject.
I am sometimes worried about what I regard to be the arrogance of Socialist-controlled councils and of the Socialist Government. That is why we in Brent want the elections. We have had a Socialist controlled council there for some time and that has been responsible for one or two little things. For example, there is a civic forum in Brent and there are speakers from the council and questions put to them by the audience. There are certain facts about the Borough of Brent published in a pamphlet called Civic Forum and it gives the size of the Borough, its population and the fact that

it has 10 aldermen and 60 councillors, including the mayor and deputy mayor. The document states:
Councillors are elected every three years, but Government legislation has extended the period of office of Councillors of the Greater London boroughs until 1968 in order that there shall be no confusion with the Greater London Council elections next year.
It is a fait accompli. This is the arrogance. There will be no doubt for the Brent Socialists about this legislation being passed. The House of Commons does not matter. The majority has decided, and that is that. The Government have stated that the period of office will be extended, which is another reason why we in Brent want the elections held next year. I hope that I have made a satisfactory case to prove why that should be done.

Mr. Wellbeloved: I wish to address my remarks, first, to Amendment No. 19, standing in the name of the right hon. Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath), in which he seeks to deprive the electors of his constituency and of mine of the benefits which will be conferred on them by the Bill, and, secondly, to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), who dealt rather scrappily with the scheme for comprehensive education in my Borough, as the Northumberland Heath and Erith Grammar School are in my constituency.
As the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) stated on a previous occasion, the Bill raises a matter of principle. That is because if one considers the Borough to which the Amendment refers, one must remember that under the London Government Act, 1963, four areas—Erith, Crayford, the old borough of Bexley and Sidcup—were brought into the London Borough of Bexley.
That being so—and here is where an important question of principle arises—are hon. Gentlemen opposite saying that it is wrong in any circumstances to extend the elected lives of councillors? I do not believe that that is being suggested because as in my case, and throughout outer London, at least one third of the councillors of the existing authorities, before amalgamation, had their lives as elected members extended, to the detriment of the outcome of the first 18 months


of the London boroughs. I know from experience that had the Chislehurst and Sidcup Council not had its life extended by the postponement under the 1963 Act, there would probably have been a change of control and the relevant transformation. If that had happened this new London Borough would have gone forward in a healthier, stronger and more joyful way. Let us have no more talk about undemocratic practices. If it is right in principle, then it is right in practice.
Questions have been raised about the counties of Essex, Kent and Surrey. They were extended, but I will not go into that matter.
I want to turn to what I consider to be the main principle involved in this Bill, and to show how my electors would feel deprived if the right hon. Member for Bexley's Amendment were carried by the Committee. It is a normal democratic tradition of local government in this country that local authorities should be elected for a three-year period, with full power in office. This is not the case for the London Borough of Bexley or indeed other London boroughs. They were elected, it is true, on 7th May, 1964, but they did not take office until April, 1965, and during that first year they were denuded of all powers, and the only money and resources they had were from a ld. or 2d. rate from the constituent authorities.
They could spend nothing, they could plan nothing with certainty, because every decision which they took had to be referred to the existing councils still in office in the extended year of life which had been conferred on them, undemocratically, by the previous Government—on the principle hon. Members opposite are trying to establish now.

Captain Walter Elliot: Would the hon. Gentleman not admit that when they were elected it was on the basis that they would resubmit themselves for election in 1967?

Mr. Wellbeloved: I would not have said this was a factor which predominated in my own constituency or borough; this was never a factor at all. When those elections took place the confusion which had been created by the London Government Act, 1963, was such that I

doubt whether anybody, electors or elected, really knew what it was all about.
They were elected, and in that first year they had no power at all. So in fact they were only to have two years of office, till May, 1967—a complete departure from what I consider to be a fundamental principle that elected members of councils should have three years in office.
Of course, that is a view that is not just mine or a view of my party or council. The Kentish Times, which circulates in the constituency of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, in an editorial of 25th February, 1966, makes this point:
Those in favour of a deferment could ask for it to be borne in mind that the new Council are in their first year. Their job of welding Erith, Bexley, Crayford and Sidcup into a united borough has been a tremendous task and one that cannot possibly be resolved in one year.
That is insufficient time if further elections have to take place in 1967. That is why I believe the Bill is correct. The article goes on to say:
We would not for one moment suggest that everything in the garden is lovely, but a complete reorganisation of this magnitude takes far longer than 12 months. We see it not from any political standpoint, but from the overall pattern.
This is an editorial circulating in the right hon. Gentleman's own area.
As for the electoral implications, there is this repeated scream from hon. Members opposite, "Give the people an opportunity to express their views"—on this scheme or that scheme. How many opportunities does one really need before one can say that one has a mandate to do a particular thing? Let us take the London Borough of Bexley which gave an overwhelming endorsement to the Labour Party which, in its election manifesto, clearly said that there would be an end to selection at 11-plus and that we would introduce a system of comprehensive education within the existing framework.
On that basis there were elected to the London Borough of Bexley 39 Labour members and 17 Conservatives. I would have thought that an overwhelming mandate for us to go forward with plans for comprehensive education.
In the October General Election, 1964, in my constituency, my predecessor at his election meetings said that
We must move forward nationally and locally towards comprehensive education.
It may be a matter of interest to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bexley—I am sorry he is not here, but I can understand the reasons why, perhaps, he is not—just to glance at the figures in that election over the borough as a whole. Labour had a majority. At the by-election in 1965, in which I played some small part, we had an absolutely overwhelming majority of the electors in all parts of the borough in favour of the comprehensive system.
If anybody believes that in November, 1965, the comprehensive plan put forward by the London Borough of Bexley was not an election issue I suggest that he reads a speech by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), to whom I shall be coming later, when he spoke in my constituency, or, again, if he will look at a pamphlet put out by Erith Grammar School Amalgamation Parents Committee, and circulated during the campaign.
It asks the electors of Erith and Cray-ford to express their views, to stand up for Erith Grammar School and the Northumberland Heath schools. It said this:
If you cannot attend a meeting write a strong letter of protest to your local or national newspaper. Write a strong letter of protest to your local councillor. Write a strong letter of protest to the Parliamentary candidate of your choice.
It suggested that people should ask the question why it was necessary to amalgamate the schools. It concluded:
In other words 'Stir it up' 
and make this an issue in this election. It was an issue in the election in November, 1965, and I am in this Committee because one-third, almost, of the London Borough of Bexley, an overwhelming majority of the electors, confirmed the desire to go forward to comprehensive education.
Then, of course, in 1966, we had the same repeat performance when we received a majority of votes in the borough as a whole, and greater still for Labour candidates, and the opponent of the

right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bexley increased the vote for Labour, and every one of us, I am quite certain, made comprehensive education part of our platform in that election.
5.15 p.m.
To turn to the remarks by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hands-worth. He referred, very briefly and sceptically, to the scheme for Erith Grammar School and to the lack of provision, I believe, for proper science laboratory facilities. It may interest him to know that in fact in Erith Grammar School and in the Northumberland Heath Schools there are at the moment 13 science laboratories and in those schools also 24 rooms for practical studies in woodwork and other things. It may be that when the final decision is taken and the placing of the pupils is worked out we shall need an extra one or two science laboratories but at the moment I do not agree it can be said that the provision is inadequate or scrappy.

Sir E. Boyle: According to this second report from the Chief Education Officer I see there are eight science laboratories in Erith Grammar School and two or three in the Northumberland Heath Schools. My query was, and I still feel it very much, after reading the four pages of this report, whether there is a proper balance of provision between the various schools which make up this group, such as to make possible an all-through scheme for the children here. I think one can legitimately feel very grave doubts about this. Even if we approve the principle of a trend towards selective integration I think it is reasonable to query this scheme.

Mr. Wellbeloved: After the councillors have done all their work on this scheme, including the one for my area, it will be submitted to my right hon. Friend, and I am quite certain that he will not approve any scheme which in any way does not provide sufficient facilities to be acceptable as an approved scheme for the education of our children, and if the Secretary of State, when he considers our scheme, feels this is so, he will find no bitterness towards him by the Council of the London Borough of Bexley. We have in good faith submitted a scheme which we believe is right, is proper, and is adequate, and we would certainly bow


to any suggestion for an amendment of this scheme made by the Minister.
The right hon. Member for Hands-worth spoke on 1st November at Erith Grammar School in the by-election. His language then was not the soft, smooth, syrupy language we normally hear from him when he speaks on education. Then he was on the political platform, rampaging to try to get his candidate preferred. Far from the polite language we normally hear, we had this intemperate language to inflame the passions of people who were desperately concerned about the future education of their children.
The right hon. Gentleman said today that he believed that this ought to be a political issue. Political in the sense that it is a matter of local and national government, yes; but party political, no. I regret—I said so then; I say so now—the way this matter was dragged into party politics and the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman himself dragged the matter into party politics at the by-election. He said this:
I must say that the plans of the Socialist-controlled borough of Bexley for what I can only call the precipitate imposition of comprehensive secondary education at Erith are among the most ill-thought out and opportunist that I have ever encountered. … this issue is a botched-up type of proposal at its worst.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Wellbeloved: The crunch will come in a moment:
My final point is that this precipitate scheme appears to have been rushed through without any proper consultation".
Does the right hon. Gentleman stand by that? Does he still believe that the scheme was rushed through without consultation, or was this just something he said on a party political platform at a by-election?

Sir E. Boyle: There was probably more consultation about the second plan in April, 1966 than there had been when I spoke at the by-election in 1965; but, as I said earlier, many of the teachers in Bexley do not appear to like it very much better; and I am not surprised.

Mr. Wellbeloved: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has made that point, because I have some information to give him later about the attitude of

the teachers in Bexley. The right hon. Gentleman concluded his by-election speech in this way:
I cannot emphasise too strongly that a really good result for the Conservative Party in Erith will be the strongest possible intimation … that public opinion is really roused and anxious about this proposal".
The public made its declaration.
I only wish that the right hon. Member for Bexley had sent his right hon. Friend another editorial which appeared in the Bexleyheath Observer before the right hon. Gentleman came to speak at that by-election. On 15th October, just 16 days before the right hon. Gentleman spoke in Erith and Crayford, the Bexleyheath Observer issued an editorial on this matter. It must have been thinking of the right hon. Gentleman when it said:
A number of prominent people, however, are jumping the gun to some extent. It is abundantly clear from the Council's minutes that the discussions now going on in regard to the merging of the Erith Grammar School with the two Northumberland Heath grammar schools and, later, of the Bexleyheath Secondary Schools, are only preliminary discussions, the results of which will figure in a report to the Education Committee and subsequently the full Council.
The editorial says "preliminary discussions". Where is the undue haste which we were told about 16 days later by the right hon. Gentleman? I wish that his right hon. Friend had sent him this editorial, because it might have given him a little more intimate knowledge of what was happening in fact and in reality. The editorial went on to talk about the time to criticise these proposals:
Now is not the time to criticise the comprehensive schools as if this borough had been committed to them with no thought or with undue haste. Now is the time to come forward with practical proposals for alternative solutions.
There have been no practical alternative proposals put forward in the London borough of Bexley by the Conservative opposition.
In making this final comment the newspaper must have had the right hon. Gentleman in mind 16 days before he spoke:
Those now carping about the 'indecent haste' of decision-making might well be accused in due course of 'indecent lethargy' if all they do is criticise without constructive comment.


I have here a letter I received from the local Conservative Party dealing with the question of comprehensive education. The local Association wrote to me on 19th August, 1966, telling me that it had passed a resolution condemning and rejecting outright the scheme as proposed by my Authority. I wrote back to the local Tory Association and said:
I would find it helpful if you would let me know whether you are completely opposed to the whole principle of comprehensive education or whether your Association has an alternative scheme to the one proposed by the Council.
I received this letter back on 28th September. The letter says briefly: "Dear Mr. Wellbeloved", Blah, blah, blah. [Laughter.] I am trying to abbreviate the Association's normal manner of exposition. The letter says:
I cannot say whether my Association is completely opposed to the whole principle of comprehensive education, as the motion debated and subsequently agreed unanimously was the resolution previously submitted to you.
So the local Conservative Party, like the right hon. Gentleman, has not given any practical, constructive consideration to the problems of secondary reorganisation facing the London Borough of Bexley. All it is indulging in is unjust and ill-informed criticism, which is not helpful when a matter of such importance, namely children's education, is under consideration.
In this respect I have the advantage of the right hon. Gentleman. When I am photographed with a child, it is invariably my own. When I am talking about the schools in the London Borough of Bexley, they are the schools which my own children attend. The Northumberland Heath-Erith Grammar School amalgamation is a school attended by one of my children. The Picardy amalgamation, which will take place, I hope, is a school attended by another of my children. It is a matter of great interest to people in our area. We resent this cheap party political attack.

Mr. Marcus Worsley: The hon. Gentleman has said that it is a matter of great interest to people in his area. Why does he wish to prevent them from voting on it next year?

Mr. Wellbeloved: The hon. Gentleman has adequately illustrated what I

meant when I said "blab, blah, blah". I meant this continuous repetition. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I will indeed. If the hon. Gentleman had been in the Chamber—or, if he was in the Chamber, if he had been consciously awake—he would have heard my opening argument when I tried to develop the principle which was involved, namely, that of local authorities having a full three-year term of office with full responsibility and duty. This was denied to the London Borough of Bexley and to the 32 Greater London boroughs because, to remind the hon. Gentleman, in case he did not clearly hear the argument, in the first year of their term they had no power of responsibility. Therefore, they have had only two years in which to transform, amalgamate and build up the new community. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] They ought to have three.

Mr. Anthony Berry: Mr. Anthony Berry (Southgate) rose——

Mr. Wellbeloved: I want to continue because many hon. Members wish to get in on this debate. If the hon. Gentleman wished to make a fresh point, I would give way; but I am sure that he only wants to rehash the argument we have heard so repeatedly during the course of the debate.
The right hon. Member for Hands-worth said that this should be a party political matter. I take a completely different view. So does my Council—at least, the majority of its members. I believe that this is a vitally important subject which ought not to be party political. Local councillors make statements, like the one I shall now quote, in a debate in the council. One Conservative member referred to the scheme as the outcome of political dogma and class hatred. The expression "political dogma" is applied to people who are bringing forward schemes, not that other people's children will be involved in, but in which their own children will be involved. This is a disgraceful description.
Then there is the argument put forward by the shadow Leader of the Education Committee on Bexley Council. He is indeed a shadow leader. This is the terrible statement he makes in the context of education. He asks the parents to bombard the council and the Minister so that they will make them "hate the name


of Bexley". Class hatred and dogma activate the Conservatives in this borough on the question of the educational programmes. Thank God the Conservatives are not in power in the local authority. With that sort of feeling in their hearts and minds, I am certain that they will not be in power in the London Borough of Bexley.
5.30 p.m.
When the right hon. Gentleman intervened he referred to the teachers being against the scheme. This is a monstrous distortion of the facts. Fortunately, I have with me two quotations from teachers who have had the courage to write to the Press. One of them in the Sidcup area says that as a full-time teacher he strongly protests at the way that a certain ballot was taken by the teachers in the area on the comprehensive scheme. He says that the questions which were posed to the teachers were impossible to answer other than by a simple "Yes" or "No" and that both those answers would have been construed as being against the comprehensive education scheme.
Nor is it true to say that the parents are against this scheme. I have quotations from parents from practically every school in the borough involved in the scheme, who has come out, either in the Press or at a meeting, against the attitude taken by a small minority of parents in the borough.
There is one final point that I ought to make in dealing with the strictures of the right hon. Member for Handsworth on our scheme. I refer to the question of consultation and indecent haste. The facts are as follows. Even prior to the right hon. Gentleman's election speech in Erith and Crayford, there were consultations between the council, the parents and teachers in the area. In fact, our education committee has six teachers co-opted on to it. One of those teachers is on the special sub-committee dealing with the comprehensive education plans. There is in the area a teachers' advisory council which nominated members of its choice to the working parties which were set up to inquire into the practicability and viability of our proposals.
Of the two working parties which were set up, one was to consider the broad

proposals for comprehensive education. There were five meetings of this working party consisting of councillors, teachers and officials of the education authority. At those five meetings sub-groups were set up to deal with specific problems, again with teachers nominating their own representatives. The second working party dealt exclusively with the Erith Grammar-Northumberland Heath school position.
The teachers of the three schools involved and the officers had no fewer than six meetings on this one point and they set up two further groups. There have been meetings with teaching staffs, two meetings exclusively with the head teachers of the schools involved in the amalgamation, a meeting with the staff of Erith Grammar School and the other two schools involved, and a whole series of other meetings. The views of the teachers have been collected by the advisory council. They were circulated to the elected members of the London Borough of Bexley and they were considered by the education committee at a very long meeting.
The alternative plan from one of the areas involved in Bexley was circulated to the education committee and to the council and has been considered. The parents and residents have had a meeting to consider the proposals because both the first and second proposals were released to the Press in the borough and were published. Therefore, the parents and residents had an opportunity of knowing what was afoot.
The proposals were also discussed with the governing bodies of the schools concerned, and there were public meetings in five areas in the London Borough of Bexley to enable these schemes to be discussed by parents and members of the public. At not one of those five meetings did a resident or parent who wanted to gain admission fail so to do. Everybody had an opportunity to attend. There have been rotary lunches and a course of lectures, and there has been a Workers' Education Association course of lectures at an evening institute.
Amendment No. 19 is quite unjustified so far as the London Borough of Bexley is concerned. Our plans for comprehensive education have been put in detail to the people most concerned. As teachers,


parents and electors they have had opportunities to discuss them. Their representations have been heard. The submission that is now before the Secretary of State will soon be given final consideration, and we may all soon know whether or not they are acceptable under Circular 10/65.

Mr. Berry: I am sure that the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) will understand if I do not follow him at this hour. The Committee has heard a lot about Bexley this afternoon and the failure of the party opposite to put the matter before the electors next year speaks for itself.
May I return to a subject which is now familiar to the Committee—the London Borough of Enfield. The Committee must appreciate what a marginal area it is, with 31 Labour representatives on the council as against 29 Conservatives, the Labour Party having taken all ten aldermanic seats.
May I refer briefly to the petition which I had the honour to present two weeks ago. Normally, when one presents a petition in this House one says a few words, watched closely by Mr. Speaker to ensure that one does not speak for too long, and one then puts the petition into the bag. That is an end of the matter.
Thanks to this Bill, my petition has had a considerable amount of publicity. In particular, may I thank the right hon. Lady the Minister of State, Home Office, who took an interest in it at an earlier stage. I should like to compliment her on the way she examined it. She said that a cursory glance would show certain factors. To take a cursory glance at 1,000 pieces of paper, each containing 10 signatures requires a computer mind. I congratulate her. Unfortunately, the dictionary defines "cursory" as "hesitating, superficial and careless". I hope to show that those adjectives are more than apt as regards her description.
The right hon. Lady suggested that because a few of the signatures came from outside the borough, the petition was of no importance. May I briefly mention some places outside the borough to which she referred? First, she referred to Cheshire. I think she must have been misinformed. There is no signature from Cheshire.

Miss Bacon: I did not refer to Cheshire. I said, "Cheshunt".

Mr. Berry: I do not know whether it has been corrected in HANSARD, where the word "Cheshire" appears. However, I accept what the right hon. Lady says.
Then she referred to Cambridge. Does she not know that there is a university there with undergraduates in residence who might use their university address when signing the petition? She referred to Surrey where there lives a person who used to live in my borough and who is shortly returning with her young children. The right hon. Lady referred to other places, which included——

Miss Bacon: Bournemouth.

Mr. Berry: Yes, Bournemouth. I hope to come back to that one later.
One in over 10,000—does that make a strong case for the right hon. Lady? She referred to Nottingham, where there is a recently married schoolteacher who is now looking for a house in my borough. In Brighton, there is a widow who has moved there after living since she was born in Enfield. In Oldham, there are two people whose daughter and five grandchildren live in Enfield.

Mr. Cyril Bence: Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

Mr. Berry: If the hon. Gentleman were better informed, he would be cheering my right hon. Friend and not Uncle Tom Cobley.
The right hon. Lady also referred to other parts of London. There was W.9, where there is a grandparent who has two grandchildren living in the borough, and S.E.12, where there are people who used to live in the borough. The right hon. Lady mentioned Chigwell, and I spoke to the lady there who signed the petition. She is a teacher in a secondary school in the Borough of Enfield. In S.E.23, which was also mentioned, there is another teacher employed in the borough.
I received a letter this morning from a teacher who lives in Acton, W.3, who signed the petition. She has been a teacher at a grammar school in the Borough of Enfield for 21 years. She wrote:
From my experience I can state categorically that the proposed comprehensive system of education in the London Borough of Enfield


is unworkable and will result in a sad deterioration in the standard of education in the borough for the next ten years at least.
So much for the right hon. Lady's suggestions.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) has given some reasons why the Bill affects my area, and has given details of the borough's education problems. There was absolutely no consultation with the parents before the scheme was imposed. We have excellent schools which will be jointed together in a hotch-potch way.
In my constituency two schools nearly a mile apart will be called one school, and two schools more than half a mile apart, with the Great Cambridge Road running between them, are being joined together in the constituency of the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) who has been conspicuously absent from the debate—I shall go on saying that until we hear his views on the subject. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] A policeman must be on duty in the morning and at lunchtime for the pupils who are crossing over. Will a policeman be on duty all day long when they are joined together?
Is that a comprehensive school in the Minister's wonderful way of doing things? People in my borough feel very strongly about the Bill. Even in the last election the Labour Party had a minority of the total votes. We know why the Bill is being imposed. It is one thing to talk about putting off elections, but in the Clause we are dealing with the lives of our children, and that is the most important thing of all. It will not be forgotten when those elections come.

Mr. Freeson: Unlike the hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry), I cannot claim that all the people of Brent are very worried about the Bill one way or the other. If we were all honest in the Chamber we would stop using that kind of language, because it is not true and we know it.
I hope that somebody sends a message to the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus) because it is he who has brought me back into the debate. I had not intended to be here, because I was busy elsewhere in the building, but I want to state again shortly the position which has occurred in my own borough.
Like speeches from the Conservative Party in the borough of Brent and in the council chamber, the speeches of the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North can only do a disservice to education in the borough and to local government in general. Many speeches we hear from members of the Conservative Party in the House and throughout the country need to be greatly changed in their character. They do a grave disservice to education and to the public.
I speak from personal knowledge and I am not just concerned with trying to recapitulate and make speeches about something that has happened elsewhere, which I am seeking to rationalise and justify because certain people have given me advice. As a Member, I have been involved in local government in my area, like other Members on both sides, for many years. In the course of this I have been closely concerned with the development of the education service in my area.
Strong feelings and strong ideological differences have been expressed about the whole issue of comprehensive education for at least 20 years. But I had hoped that by this time, with the changes that are going on both among those who accept comprhensive education and those who have criticised it in the past, we would be discussing the matter rather more quietly and a little less ideologically, and dropping a great deal of the silly sloganising we get in the House and elsewhere.
5.45 p.m.
Many local authorities, both Labour-and Conservative-controlled, have spent many hours with thousands of people throughout the country in studying their schools set-up and trying to improve them along lines which we have now all come to accept are comprehensive. In the past various names have been given to them. Some of us have accepted the principle, declared it and worked out schemes accordingly, but in many areas, particularly over the past seven years, an increasing number of education authorities have been moving, whether slowly or quickly, towards what many of us generally describe as the comprehensive principle, even when they have not given lip service to that principle.
We know this on this side, and in the Labour Party, teachers know it in their


organisations and schools, and if the matter were discussed a little more quietly on occasions other than consideration of the Bill, hon. Members opposite would discuss it and think along those lines. It was in this spirit, whether hon. Members opposite like to accept it or not, that members of the Brent Council, of which I am still a member, sought to study the educational system in the borough they had come to administer.
I want to go over some of the history, because the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North distorted matters not only for hon. Members but, as so many of his colleagues in the Conservative Party locally are doing, distorted matters for the parents. I want to deal with the history in the council chamber and the reaction among parents. At the very first meeting of the Education Committee of the borough of Brent the education officer was asked to prepare a report. It was moved that he should be asked to prepare a preliminary report within six months as to how the secondary education system in the borough could be reorganised on comprehensive lines. The vote in favour was then unanimous, and Mr. Lee was there.
About three weeks later, when that report was submitted to the borough council, the division came. Having voted unanimously and spoken in favour of such a report being prepared the Conservative Party, no doubt having been brought under a certain amount of pressure from its local associations, started the rather foolish storm and division that has continued ever since. I know this as a matter of fact, for I was there. The Conservatives have never satisfactorily answered the question put to them time and time again as to why they voted unanimously at the start and within a matter of weeks came to the town hall en bloc and stated that they were against the idea. They have carried on the fight ever since.
I shall not start quoting—as one of my hon. Friends quite correctly did—the kind of speeches we had to suffer in our area, but the kind of campaign waged by the Conservative Party in Brent has done a good deal of damage and caused considerable confusion among parents. Week after week people come to see me or write letters about the future education service who have a completely distorted

idea of what is planned as a result of the stupid, highly political party campaign waged by the Conservative Party.
Every time a major policy decision is taken in a town hall or here it is a political decision, and I shall not distort the word "political", unlike hon. Members opposite who, from time to time, when they choose to do so, say, "Do not bring politics into it". It is a political decision. What I am asking for, even at this late stage, is that both locally and nationally we have a little more intelligent discussion about what we are proposing.
In our area we produced a scheme which has been improved as a result of consultation with the Ministry and other people in the borough. We are proceeding to establish that scheme. It will prove to be a great advance educationally for the children of the borough. As soon as we can make further steps forward in the school building programme, in school staffing and in equipment for the schools, we shall again improve the scheme submitted and approved, which, as is the case in so many other areas, is based on the facilities available.
That was the position when we submitted our first proposals. As a result of submitting them, certain improvements were made by the Ministry in the school building programme. As a consequence of those improvements we have been able to change and modify the scheme yet further. We shall always be willing and wanting to do this. I hope that in future we shall have the co-operation instead of silly sloganising of hon. Members opposite.
I come briefly to the question of rewarding. I shall not go over the history of this; I have not the papers with me. It ill behoves any member of the Conservative Party in Wembley, in the House of Commons or elsewhere, to challenge members of the Labour Party locally or Labour Ministers about consultation on this matter or about reflecting the desires of the people. If there was one party in London which had no consultation at all about its proposals prior to the 1964 Election under the new London set-up, it was the majority Conservative Party on the council in Wembley. It prepared a scheme and submitted it to the council


with no consultation with any organisation prior to approving it. I challenge denial of this. It began to get reactions afterwards, but it had made its decision.
As with comprehensive education, one rule which we laid down from the start under a Labour majority in Brent was that there would be the greatest possible consultation and that letters would go to the longest list of organisations we could establish in order to get their views. We got their views, something which the Conservatives in Wembley never did. The majority or organisations and people who have expressed views on re-warding, as on comprehensive education, have supported the council. I challenge denial of that, as well.
It has often been said by members of the Conservative Party in some of the many foolish speeches to which I have referred that we are arrogant and are not interested in the people, and that we are just interested in power for its own sake. What I ask hon. Members and people living in my borough and elsewhere is to look at the services now being prepared and being implemented in their areas and to ask themselves a few simple questions. Let them consider whether they are being improved.
I could cite many services in the northern part of my borough—that is, the old Wembley borough—which were virtually non-existent before the new set-up was created and before a Labour majority took over, such as in mental welfare, old people's welfare, health, schools, and housing. I could refer to a whole range of services on which a marked step forward has been taken. There are major programmes and plans going ahead which were not even dreamed of by the Conservatives on the Wembley part of the borough before 1964. They are now being pushed ahead.
Whether we agree with one another or not on major ideological matters, it is on this basis that I ask hon. Members and people outside to consider the future of local government. I hope that we shall go back to our boroughs and discuss the real issues facing the public and that people will not just listen to a few dissident members of a minority party. [Interruption.] I hear a few "tut tuts". Let me spell it out in greater detail. I

shall be glad to see Conservative Party representatives in Brent paying more attention to local matters by being in attendance. Let us see them at local functions and local organisations instead of just hearing them making speeches here. Let them be seen to be participating in local discussions on issues facing members of the public locally. So far we have not seen this.

Mr. Reader Harris: I hope that the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) will forgive me if I do not precisely take up his line of argument. I do not know what things are like in Brent, but we do not meet the same conditions in Hounslow, where all members of all parties take a great interest in what goes on. I wish to say a few words in support of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus), because I am interested in Amendment No. 32.
I was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) say that in his area the councillors had been in control for only two years. In the borough of Hounslow the present councillors were elected in April, 1964, and did not get legal control until 1st April, 1965, but no decisions of any importance were taken by the old Heston and Isleworth Borough Council in its last year of office without reference to the "shadow" council, as we called it. The members of the Hounslow Borough Council have been in virtual control for three years, and I should not have thought it unreasonable that in 1967 the electors should have the opportunity of pronouncing on their work.
In Hounslow, when the present borough council was elected, there were 58 Labour members, including all the aldermanic seats, against 12 Conservatives. The balance has been slightly redressed to 57 against 13. This does not in any way represent the distribution of votes as between Labour and Conservative members throughout the borough; the division is very much closer than that.
I recognise that by the accident of the distribution of votes in our democratic society one can get at council and national level a very large majority for one party, but this is a situation


which we can tolerate only if people have the opportunity at regular intervals to pronounce on the efforts of their elected representatives. As has been said, those elected in 1964 were elected on the understanding that there would be an election in 1967.
There is one matter on which I think the people of the Borough of Hounslow are anxious to express their views through the ballot box, and that is education. Since 1964, when the present borough council was elected, some detailed proposals have been made for changing the present education system to a comprehensive system. When the present borough council was elected, the details were not known; but now they are known.
About a year ago the borough council held a series of meetings throughout the borough to explain to parents exactly what the proposals would mean in practice. I do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that those meetings were not exactly happy. At times, they were quite stormy. Many of the parents felt that they had not had an opportunity of putting their point of view.
My opinion is that there are many parents in the borough who are not happy with the new proposals. Throughout the Borough of Hounslow, or at any rate in Heston and Isleworth, which is my constituency, there were, broadly speaking, few criticisms of the education system. Obviously, there was a desire to bring many of the buildings up to date, but, by and large, we had, and still have, some very good schools, like the Isleworth Grammar School and the Spring Grove Grammar School, which are second to none in the country. We have first-class secondary schools, such as the Heston Secondary School. We have magnificent girls' schools.
All this is to be thrown into a hotchpotch and the schools are to be divided up. We are to have comprehensive schools formed from buildings which by no stretch of the imagination can be considered to be suitable. In certain cases they are some miles apart.
6.0 p.m.
The scheme does not commend itself to many electors. All I am asking is that when 1967 comes, there should be, as the electors expected, an opportunity

for them to pronounce their views through the ballot box. These are matters on which many of my electors feel strongly. It is difficult for me to know exactly what they all think. Few write to tell me that they want the new comprehensive scheme. Many write to tell me that they are against it. Surely a democratic election is the right way for them to express their views.
Finally, on the point that we do not want to have two elections so close together in one year, that has happened before and I cannot see what the objection is to having it again. Every time there is a local election, whether for the Greater London Council or for a borough council, there is enormous disturbance and dislocation at the town hall, but if it is all got through in one year instead of being spread over two years, surely the situation cannot be any worse.
Having said all that, I must point out that I fully support everything that is being said on this side of the Committee. There is no need for rancour in my borough, as there appears to be in Crayford and Erith. Nevertheless, there is a desire that we should have the elections next year as promised.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Maurice Foley): We have been discussing a series of Amendments to delete many boroughs from the Bill. I think that the debate has reflected the concern expressed on one side and refuted on the other about arguments as to what is real and what is imaginary.
I ought to begin by making clear, as the Home Secretary did in introducing the Bill on Second Reading, that the Bill arose from representations made to the Home Office by the London Boroughs Association, and in so far as this debate is concerned with the emphasis that has been placed on comprehensive education, I must categorically refute any suggestions or imputations that the Department of Education and Science was involved, was consulted, or made representations to influence the Home Secretary's decision. So any arguments that might be advanced to suggest a conspiracy or a bulldozing attitude or a notion that somehow we shall get comprehensive education via the back door are without foundation.
In so far as the debate has largely centred around the question of comprehensive education, I think I should be right in stating, as I did the other evening when we were earlier discussing the Bill in Committee, that the nation has already spoken in general terms quite clearly on this subject. Here in London it was the major item, together with housing, in the Greater London Council elections. It figured prominently in the election campaigns of 1964 and 1966. Therefore, one could say broadly that the nation, in terms of the way it voted, reflected approval of this principle.
Then we come to the question, quite rightly raised, of the devising by individual boroughs of their proposals and representations to the Department of Education and Science. Because of what was raised this afternoon, and also because of comments made the other evening, I think I should refer to Circular 10/65, since it would seem from what many have said that they are not aware of its existence or not aware of its content.
I want to deal particularly with the question of consultation. The first sentence of paragraph 40 of the Circular reads:
The smooth inception and continuing success of any scheme of reorganisation will depend on the co-operation of teachers and the support and confidence of parents. To secure this there must be a process of consultation and explanation before any scheme is approved by an authority for submission to the Secretary of State.
Paragraphs 41 and 42 refer to the way in which teachers, in their associations, and parents ought to be involved in this kind of consultation.
Reference has been made by two hon. Members opposite to the progress or lack of progress in this field. The hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus) referred to the time given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science, to receive deputations and to address meetings. The hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry), on the other hand, referred to "a total absence of consultation". I would suggest that it might be helpful if those two hon. Members could get together and discuss how one sets about it in so far as the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North is highly

satisfied with the measure of consultation or facilities provided and the hon. Member for Southgate is dissatisfied.
I turn to the comments by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Sir E. Boyle). In offering detailed criticisms of some of the schemes, he made a number of points which are relevant and will certainly be considered by the Secretary of State. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that we cannot at this stage prejudge the decision. Some of the criticisms made of individual schemes by right hon. Members opposite have already been conveyed to the Secretary of State directly by teachers and by parents, and these objections are being fully taken into account and carefully considered, as all submissions will be. Therefore, no hon. Member need feel that his constituency is neglected and has not access to make representations in relation to schemes proposed in their boroughs. They can make representations direct to the Department of Education and Science. Indeed, many have already done so.
In concluding his intervention, the right hon. Gentleman also referred to the fact that the Secretary of State has no powers to compel. This, I think, is a direct refutation of those who referred to bulldozing, Nazi/Fascist tactics, and so on. The Secretary of State has no powers to compel. Indeed, he publicly stated this in answer to a Question on 3rd November from the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee). The Secretary of State for the Department of Education and Science replied:
On present evidence I do not foresee the need for legislation in this matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd November, 1966; Vol. 734, c. 138.]
So one is entitled to ask: Are the fears that are being expressed real or imaginary?

Mr. Iremonger: ; But the right hon. Gentleman also said that if he saw any need for legislation he would not hesitate to introduce it.

Mr. Foley: I am sure that my right hon. Friend did not say that. If the hon. Gentleman can quote the reference for that, I will willingly withdraw, but I am sure that he is wrong. I hope that he will refer to it again for his own sake.
The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), in opening the debate, referred to my comments on a previous occasion when I was questioning the motivation in terms of the choice of Camden as a borough which should be excluded. I did not do it at all to indicate that any borough should be excluded. I illustrated the borough in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency in order to indicate the high selectivity and the motivation, or the possible motivation, in his selection of Camden as the borough on which he would argue. In the same way, the arguments put forward last time about the exclusion of a borough apply equally in this instance to the Amendments that we are considering. We believe that it would be wrong to exclude any borough from the Bill. We believe that in the interest of good administration for the political parties, for the Press and for publicity, all the boroughs should be treated in exactly the same way, and for these reasons I must reject the Amendments.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The decision which the Committee will have to make is on the Amendment to leave the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames out of the provisions of the Bill. Having heard the whole debate, I think that I am right in saying that the Under-Secretary of State and I have the lonely distinction of being the only two speakers actually to refer to that issue. The Under-Secretary himself only just did so, obviously catching a last minute glimpse of his brief. With respect to him, he gave no reasons. He merely said, "We believe that it is wrong to exclude one particular borough." He gave no grounds for that belief and he did not attempt to argue that the suggestion was impractical. He merely said, "We believe that no one should be excluded"—even though, as in this case, the particular borough has asked to be excluded, its council ask for it to be excluded, and there is no practical difficulty in doing so. With the resources of a Government Department behind him, all that the Under-Secretary can do is to say, "We believe that all should suffer alike." That is a wholly inadequate answer, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will be prepared shortly to go into the Lobby and express their views as to the inadequacy of that answer.
I want to comment only for a moment on the broader issues of the debate, in the course of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) gave such an authoritative analysis of the problems of the reorganisation of secondary education in London.
I must pick up what the Under-Secretary said. He said that at previous elections the nation has decided this. I do not know whether the Under-Secretary realises that the group of Amendments which we are considering deal with the outer London boroughs which are local education authorities. If one has any respect for the independence of local education authorities—and there are reasons for doubting whether some people in the Department of Education and Science have any respect for their independence—he will realise that it is not for the nation to decide; it is for the electors in each borough. That is precisely what they are being denied by the Bill, and it is that right which our Amendment seeks to give in the case of at least one of them.
I agree with what the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) said. The reorganisation of secondary education is a political decision. The question is, who should take it? Should it be the local electors in each borough or the central Government? That is the issue which is raised. Where it is, we are told, a political decision, in this subject-matter of the organisation of education, it is a revolutionary concept to say that it is a matter in which the local electors should be denied a voice and that it should be treated as being settled by the central Government.
The issue is not whether comprehensive education is a good thing or a bad thing. It is not even whether the schemes of particular boroughs are right and sound or unsound and ill-judged. The question is a much simpler one: is this so important a matter as to be one on which the local electors should have the right to express their view before final decisions are taken?
All the arguments which we have heard from hon. Members opposite indicate that they are well-informed on these subjects. But surely all the arguments as to why the schemes in their particular boroughs are good lead to the same conclusion as the speeches of my


right hon. and hon. Friends criticising them; that is, that these are very important matters, quite difficult and controversial matters in their local application, on which the local electors should have a right to decide.
It seems curious that the Government should select the year 1967–68, which is the year of decision on these matters, as being the one year in which the normal date of election is to be postponed so that the present councils go on. I suggest that it would be a bad thing in any year, as I have said at earlier stages of the Bill. But to pick out this particular year, when a decision which all hon. Members who have spoken from both sides admit is of the greatest importance has to be taken, is one of the oddest and most extraordinary aspects of this proposed Measure.
I pick up what I took to be a personal reference in the remarks of the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved), who made the observation that, unlike the mover of this Amendment, when he was photographed with children he had the advantage of their being his own. I accept that my own children are now of an age which makes them unsuitable for a group of small infants, but I can assure the Committee that my children are at least as photogenic as their father.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. A. H. Macdonald: In defence of my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved), I am sure that he was not referring to the person or the family of the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), but to the person of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the right hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald) is able to read the thoughts of his hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Cray-ford, I would not dispute his telepathic powers. I am only glad that he has put the record right because, as it was expressed, it appeared to be a reflection on the decorative nature of my own family.
If I may come back to the point on which we should decide, it was very well summed up in the Sunday Express of 20th

November. In the leading article, these words appeared:
Until last week thousands of anxious London parents had a date to look forward to: April 13, 1967. … This chance to protect their children's interests is now to be denied them.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): April 13th?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I think that the Sunday Express was wrong. If the right hon. Gentleman really attaches significance to a month's variation in this, that would seem to be a confirmation of the wholly frivolous attitude that he has adopted throughout the debate. It may be that I have misread that excellent newspaper.
Whether or not it is a month out, the point is clear. Parents had the right, under the system as it stood, to decide upon what every member of this Committee is agreed is a very important matter affecting their children. The Home Secretary thinks that a month's variation is so important. Because of a decision which he took, that decision, for better or worse, cannot be taken by the elected representatives of the people. It is because we protest against that that we shall vote for the Amendment.

Mr. Laurence Pavitt: I will not delay the Committee more than a few minutes, because, like the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) I know that we wish to decide this matter in the Lobbies and get on with our next business.
I want to respond on the question of the borough of Brent. In the course of the passage through the House of the previous Act, when we went through the long history for hours upstairs on the London Government Bill, the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus) and the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell) added their names to a similar Amendment to exclude Wembley and Willesden, which I proposed at that time. I want to explain to those two hon. Members why, in my opinion, it would be wrong now to exclude the London Borough of Brent from the present proposal.
In the brief time that the old boroughs of Wembley and Willesden have had to become welded together, I did not think


that it would be possible to go through the barrier of the North Circular Road, across which pass the only two roads connecting them. However, that has been achieved, and I pay tribute to the members of the present Council on both sides who have succeeded in doing that. The fact that this year we have a Wembley mayor and again next year the mayor will come from Wembley and not from Willesden is indicative of the union which has been achieved, and that the council thinks in Brent terms.
It is because the union is still in its early days that it would be disastrous if, next year, the council had to hold an election and risk overturning the progressive development and integration which is proceeding.
The hon. Member for Heston and Isle-worth (Mr. Reader Harris) has already mentioned the time spent in the first year in getting the new system going. Naturally we had difficulty in getting over the teething troubles, but we are now settling down. In Willesden we have had to make changes by going across the North Circular Road, and all our focal points of local administration are now not in my area but in that of the hon. Member for Wembley, South. It is because we have made that effort, and are making it, that I am anxious that we shall not disturb it next year, but that we shall be able to go forward to the year after when we can be even more successful in consolidating the gains which we have made and the building of a Brent community feeling.
There have been a number of references to comprehensive education. I would remind the Committee that we cannot have selection without rejection. In the circumstances of the borough of Brent, there is a feeling in Willesden, West, which has all the social problems, the antiquated schools, the lavatories which will be frozen next month, and so on, that it will not just be children rejected but a whole area unless we are able to reorganise the educational system. In the representations which have been made to me about education, one of the points made by parents in Wembley is that the schools in my area are not good enough for their children, but I do not accept that schools are all right for Willesden children but not good enough for

Wembley. Therefore I am anxious to consolidate in a comprehensive way.
I repeat the appeal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson), that we should tackle this problem of how best to educate our children by taking it away from sloganising and consider how, with the situation which faces us, with the schools that we have, and with the excellent body of teachers which we have, we can make progress. For these reasons I say to the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North and to the hon. Member for Wembley, South that on this occasion I am sorry that I cannot support them in their Amendment, and I hope that the Committee will reject the Amendments dealing with Kingston-upon-Thames and the Borough of Brent.

Mr. Hugh Rossi: The debate has ranged mostly around the question of comprehensive education, and rightly so, because this is the most vital factor in this debate, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) for singling out Haringey as one of the 32 London boroughs deserving particular condemnation for the type of scheme which it has put forward.
But education is not the only matter on which the electors desire to go to the polls at an early date, certainly in Hornsey. One of the matters on which they wish to express their opinions is rating. As with Wembley and Brent, in 1963, Hornsey, a Conservative-administered borough, was amalgamated with two Socialist-controlled boroughs. A low rated, well-administered, Conservative borough joined two high-rated Socialist-controlled boroughs, and it was at once apparent to everyone concerned that by the mere fact of that amalgamation rates in my constituency would increase considerably.
Thereupon, in company with the former Member for Hornsey, I went to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. We asked that the powers contained in the London Government Act, 1963, should be invoked in so far as they gave the Minister power to order a differential rate where a low-rated borough was to be joined to a high-rated one, and the result of the marriage was that the low-rated


borough was to see a dramatic increase in its rates. In such circumstances the Minister had power to order a differential rate between the areas so that the acceleration of the rate increase would be mitigated.
The Minister refused to do that, solely because the Socialist parts of the borough, the majority party, would not agree. His answer—and this is the relevance of this to the debate—was, "Wait till polling day, then the electorate will have an opportunity of commenting on the policies which are bringing about their higher rates".
Our rate in Hornsey has gone up by no less than 4s. 9d. in the pound in two years. One can well imagine the hardship which this is causing, yet we were told by the Minister, "You will soon have an opportunity to express your views on the policies which are bringing this about." Today we are told that this opportunity is to be postponed. I regard the Bill as a breach of what was said by the Parliamentary Secretary when he declined to authorise a differential rate. He fobbed us off. He refused to exercise his power by saying that we would have an opportunity to vote on the matter, and now the opportunity is being taken away from us.
What are these policies which are bringing about this disastrous increase in the rates in our area? One of them is the abandonment of the differential rent scheme. Whereas in the past lower income tenants paid a rent which they could well afford, and the higher income tenants paid a much higher rent, which was still within their incomes, this scheme has now been broken up. The result is that lower income tenants are paying 10s. a week more than they did before, while higher income tenants are paying less than before, and the ratepayers are paying through the nose.
People with higher incomes are unhappy about the present situation. They say that it is ridiculous that their rent has gone down 5s. a week, while that of the family next door, who can ill afford it, has gone up by 10s. a week, and the rates have gone up. It is a proper Fred Carno outfit. These are the comments which I received about the way in which my local authority is behaving.
Hon. Gentlemen opposite are very sensitive about housing. They are, we are told, the only people who can build houses. Last year my local authority spent £3½ million to buy a ready-built artisan estate. It has spent another £500,000 in the first six months of this financial year buying properties outside redevelopment schemes. Not one additional unit of housing accommodation has been added by this vast expenditure—not one family has been rehoused. And yet it has on its hands a large site which has lain fallow and derelict for more than a year. Not a brick has been laid on it, nor a foundation dug. This sort of thing would never have happened under a Conservative Hornsey. We had the contractors moving in at one end of the site when people had not left the other end, and yet here we have a site which has been empty for more than a year.
That is the sort of thing about which my electors are getting very concerned, and about which they want to express their opinions. They are now being told that they will have to wait another year to do so, and I can foresee a further substantial increase in our rates in the spring. They will continue to rise while we are having to sit tight under this kind of administration. It is no wonder that the people in my area wish to go to the polls at an early date.

Mr. F. P. Crowder (Ruislip-Northwood): I shall detain the Committee for only a few moments. I speak for Ruislip and Northwood in the Borough of Hillingdon. I was somewhat surprised and worried to hear the Minister say that all boroughs should be treated in the same way. I do not agree with that. Local government knows local needs, and it should be on a local basis.
I think that it was in 1955 that we had the General Election within three or four weeks of the local elections, and that presented no difficulty whatsover in any shape or form. In my opinion no inconvenience will be caused to Hillingdon if its elections are held this year. I therefore ask that all boroughs should not be treated in the same way.
6.30 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State said that this matter was decided by the nation. If it had been decided by the nation, I can assure him that the sort of majority


that I would have got at the last election would have been the sort that one gets in a place like Ebbw Vale—absolutely overwhelming and colossal. I cannot emphasise too strongly the real anxiety and apprehension felt in my constituency on the subject of comprehensive schools.
I wonder whether we can arrive at a compromise in this matter. I am sure that the Under-Secretary would be the first to agree that in this new, enthusiastic, eager Socialist Government, out to reform everything, everywhere, the right hand does not yet begin to know what the left is doing. But could we come to some arrangement on the following basis? As I said in last Tuesday's debate, I would not have raised the matter if the question of comprehensive schools was

not so urgent. If we could compromise in this way, let us ask the Ministry concerned to put off making a decision about comprehensive schools because until next year quite clearly, the Government will not give way.

This is not a great deal to ask because once the deed is done it will create a difficult situation for the teachers, parents and children concerned. If the Government are not prepared to do that they
either fear their fate too much,
Or their deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch,
To win or lose it all.

Question put, That those words be there added:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 139, Noes 223.

Division No. 218.]
AYES
[6.32 p.m.


Astor, John
Goodhew, Victor
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n &amp; M'd'n)
Gower, Raymond
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)


Batsford, Brian
Grant-Ferris, R.
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Grieve, Percy
Murton, Oscar


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Biggs-Davison, John
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Nott, John


Blaker, Peter
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Bossom, Sir Clive
Hawkins, Paul
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)


Body-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Heald Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Braine, Bernard
Heseltine, Michael
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Higgins, Terence L.



Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Hill, J. E. B.
Percival, Ian


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Pink, R, Bonner


Buck, Antony (Colchester)
Holland, Philip
Pounder, Rafton


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hornby, Richard
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Burden, F. A.
Hornby, Richard
Prior, J. M. L.


Campbell, Gordon
Howell, David (Guildford)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Hunt, John
Ridley Hn. Nicholas


Cary, Sir Robert
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Ridsdale, Julian


Channon H. P. G.
Iremonger, T. L.
Roots, William


Cooke, Robert
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Royle, Anthony


Cordle, John
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Corfield, F. V.
Kershaw, Anthony
Scott, Nicholas


Costain, A. P.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Sharples, Richard


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Crawley, Aidan
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Sinclair, Sir George


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Stainton, Keith


Crowder, F. P.
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)


Cunningham, Sir Knox
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Summers, Sir Spencer


Dalkeith, Earl of
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Tapsell, Peter


Dance, James
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Longden, Gilbert
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Loveys, W. H.
Tilney, John


Doughty, Charles
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. sir John


Eden, Sir John
MacArthur, Ian
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Walters, Dennis


Elliott, R.W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain
Weatherill, Bernard


Errington, Sir Eric
Mathew, Robert
Whitelaw, William


Eyre, Reginald
Maude, Angus
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Farr, John
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Woodnutt, Mark


Fisher, Nigel
Mawby, Ray
Worsley, Marcus


Gibson-Watt, David
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.



Glover, Sir Douglas
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Glyn, Sir Richard
Miscampbell, Norman
Mr. Jasper More and Mr. Anthony Grant.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Armstrong, Ernest
Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice


Allen, Scholefield
Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.


Archer, Peter
Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)
Beaney, Alan




Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Hart, Mrs. Judith
Owen, Will (Morpeth)


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Haseldine, Norman
Padley, Walter


Bessell, Peter
Hattersley, Roy
Paget, R. T.


Binns, John
Hazell, Bert
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Bishop, E. S.
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)
Pardoe, John


Blackburn, F.
Hooley, Frank
Park, Trevor


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Hooson, Emlyn
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Booth, Albert
Horner, John
Pavitt, Laurence


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)
Pentland, Norman


Bradley, Tom
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)


Brooks, Edwin
Howie, W.
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)


Brown, Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)
Hynd, John
Price, William (Rugby)


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Buchan, Norman
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)
Randall, Harry


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)
Rankin, John


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Janner, Sir Barnett
Redhead, Edward


Carmichael, Neil
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Rees, Merlyn


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Richard, Ivor


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)


Chapman, Donald
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Coe, Denis
Judd, Frank
Robinson, Rt.Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)


Coleman, Donald
Kelley, Richard
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walh'stow, E.)


Concannon, J. D.
Kenyon, Clifford
Rodgers, William (Stockton)


Conlan, Bernard
Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
Roebuck, Roy


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Rose, Paul


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Lawson, George
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Leadbitter, Ted
Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Lester, Miss Joan
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)


Dalyell, Tam
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N)
Sheldon, Robert


Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)




Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.



Lipton, Marcus
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Loughlin, Charles
Short, Rt.Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Luard, Evan
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Davies, Robert (Cambridge)
Lubbock, Eric
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Dempsey, James
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Dickens, James
McBride, Neil
Slater, Joseph


Dobson, Ray
MacColl, James
Small, William


Doig, Peter
Macdonald, A. H.
Spriggs, Leslie


Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Steel David (Roxburgh)


Eadie, Alex
Mackintosh, John P.
Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire,W.)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Maclennan, Robert
Stonehouse, John


English, Michael
McNamara, J. Kevin
Swain, Thomas


Ennals, David
MacPherson, Malcolm
Thornton, Ernest


Ensor, David
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Thorpe, Jeremy


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Urwin, T. W.


Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
Manuel, Archie
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Faulds, Andrew
Mapp, Charles
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


Fernyhough, E.
Marquand, David
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Wallace, George


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Mason, Roy
Wellbeloved, James


Foley, Maurice
Mellish, Robert
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Millan, Bruce
Whitaker, Ben


Ford, Ben
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
White, Mrs. Eirence


Fowler, Gerry
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Whitlock, William


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Molloy, William
Wilkins, W. A.


Freeson, Reginald
Moonman, Eric
Willey Rt. Hn. Frederick


Gardner, Tony
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Garrett, W. E.
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Carrow, Alex
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Moyle, Roland
Winnick, David


Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Newens, Stan
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Gregory, Arnold
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Grey, Charles (Durham)
Oakes, Gordon
Woof, Robert


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Ogden, Eric
Wyatt, Woodrow


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
O'Malley, Brian
Zilliacus, K.


Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Oram, Albert E.



Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Orbach, Maurice
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hamling, William
Orme, Stanley
Mr. Alan Fitch and


Hannan, William
Oswald, Thomas
Mr. Harry Gourlay.


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)

Mr. William Roots:: I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 1, line 28, at end add:
(5) This section shall not apply to the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The Chairman: It would be convenient if with Amendment No. 17 we discussed

new Clause 5.—"Application to Inner London Education Authority."

Mr. Roots: The Committee will not have failed to realise that this Amendment refers specifically—and it is the only one referring specifically—to an inner London borough. No doubt that


was why, in selecting it, Sir Eric, you selected also Clause 5 relating to the educational provision.
In the light of what has been said, I do not intend to indulge in repetition. The inner boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea would very much welcome an election taking place at the proper time. What is more, it would appear that the Labour Party representatives on the council consider they have something on which they would like to go to the electorate. I saw—as did many other hon. Members—a demand in the London evening papers the other day that the chairman of the finance committee should resign on a housing matter and that no doubt that would test the electorate. However, it would not do that, because that particular councillor happens to sit in a ward for which there has just been a by-election which had disastrous results for the Labour Party and even more disastrous results for the Liberal Party. If, in fact, it is desired to put the electorate to the test, the answer is to let an election take place and not have Clause 1 apply to this borough. There would not be much force about it, because the majority party would be called upon to put the issue to the electorate. I hope that the hon. Member for Kensington, North (Mr. George Rogers) will support me in that view, that the Labour Party in Kensington and Chelsea would welcome an election, as indeed would the Conservatives.
I do not intend to deal at length with the educational aspect. By reason of the organisation of the Inner London Education Authority, failure to elect borough representatives but, on the other hand, to have an election of the Greater London Council representatives completely throws out of gear the whole design of that Inner London Education Authority. That is another reason why the comprehensive issue—certainly regarding my own constituency of South Kensington—does not particularly arise, because there is already an important comprehensive school in existence. It is quite clear, so far as it affects the general representation on the education authority, that the election for the borough as well as for the Greater London Council should take place next year to allow the policies to be put before the electorate generally.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): I gather that the argument here is that the postponement of the borough elections will affect education in inner London. I should like to show that this is not so. Leaving aside any argument about comprehensive education, under the Act the Inner London Education Authority is composed of 12 inner London boroughs which are largely the old L.C.C. The Inner London Education Authority is a special Committee of the G.L.C. with 53 members, of whom 40 are councillors of the Greater London Council and 12 are appointed by the inner London boroughs, one from each borough. One represents the Common Council and 12 are co-opted members. It will therefore be seen from these figures that the election to the London boroughs would not be affected to any great extent by the position of the Inner London Education Authority. At the borough council elections, even if there were changes—and I cannot foresee there being any changes—in the operation of the Inner London Education Authority, these changes could not be a decisive factor in education policy.
6.45 p.m.
There are two Tory boroughs within the Inner London Education Authority. One is Kensington and Chelsea and the other is Westminster. I see that Westminster is missing from the Order Paper. That is perfectly understandable, since Westminster, a Tory borough, was one of those which were in favour of the borough elections being postponed from 1967 to 1968. The new proposals suggested for the Inner London Education Authority have not yet been submitted to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science, but they are being submitted to him. I wish to point out that comprehensive schools within the Inner London Education Authority is not a new idea. There are already 77 comprehensive schools within the inner London education area. This is not by any means a new issue for what is virtually the old L.C.C. area. Comprehensive schools have been an issue at L.C.C. elections for at least 20 years. The people of London have given a decisive majority in favour of comprehensive schools within the Inner London


Education Authority. This Amendment has really very little in it.
I do not wish to go into the whole question of comprehensive education. To say that the postponement of the elections for the borough councils within the Inner London Education Authority can affect in any way the issue of comprehensive schools within that area is completely untrue.
The people of the old L.C.C. have shown in no small way how much in favour they are of a comprehensive education within that area. There cannot be any substance to the argument by the party opposite that the postponement of the borough elections from 1967 to 1968 will in any way affect the future plans for education in the inner London area.

Mr. Worsley: If it were not for the announcement we are expecting soon, I would wish to speak at considerable length in reply to the right hon. Lady the Minister of State, Home Office. I was bewildered to hear a speech from a Home Office Minister which referred entirely and solely to education, as though that were the only issue at stake in the London elections which should be held next year.
I have in my hand a sheaf of issues upon which the electors of my borough—and, no doubt, of other boroughs also—would wish to vote next year. It is not only a matter of education. There is housing, for instance. It is a fantastic fact that the electors of Central London are to be denied an opportunity to vote on the housing issue, yet the right hon. Lady has spoken only about education.
I am tempted to carry on—if it were not for the clock and the present situation I would speak for some time—but, instead, I will only place on record, in support of what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) has said, that the case for no postponement of elections is identically as strong with or without education, because it rests, not on the convenience of parties or of anyone else, nor on any particular issue, but on the sound

democratic principle that it is wrong to postpone elections for the convenience of any party.

Sir E. Boyle: We had a lengthy debate on the last group of Amendments, so it may be for the convenience of the Committee if we have only a short debate on this Amendment and the new Clause that we are taking with it.
The right hon. Lady the Minister of State, Home Office, said that comprehensive schools within I.L.E.A. are not a new idea. Of course they are not—indeed, they are not a new idea for the country as a whole. Their number went up by 50 per cent. in 1964, during our last year of office. The right hon. Lady will be well aware that the anxiety is not about the comprehensives within I.L.E.A., many of which have been notably successful, but about the future of the remaining schools within I.L.E.A.
London has been a unitary area ever since the school boards of 1870. There has been an enormous amount of criss-crossing of schools, and travelling wide distances, and very many schools have gained long pedigrees. It is therefore natural that there should be grave anxiety within I.L.E.A. about the future of individual schools. We on this side say that bearing in mind that anxiety, the voters in the inner London boroughs no less than in the outer London boroughs should have a chance to express their opinion next year.
We accept, as the right hon. Lady says, that the postponement of elections in London would not necessarily be decisive for Inner London or for educational policy. None the less, we hold the view that because of anxieties concerning education, and because of other factors which my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) has mentioned, the electors of the inner London boroughs should likewise have their opportunity to express their view next year. It is for that reason that we shall press this Amendment to a Division.

Question put, That those words be there inserted:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 142, Noes 226.

Division No. 219.]
AYES
[6.54 p.m.


Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n &amp; M'd'n)
Bell, Ronald
Biggs-Davison, John


Batsford, Brian
Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Blaker, Peter


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Berry, Hn. Anthony
Bossom, Sir Clive




Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Murton, Oscar


Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Braine, Bernard
Hawkins, Paul
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Nott, John


Bromley-Davenport, Lt. Col. Sir Walter
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Heseltine, Michael
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)


Buck, Antony (Colchester)
Higgins, Terence L.
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hill, J. E. B.
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Burden, F. A.
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)


Campbell, Gordon
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Percival, Ian


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Holland, Philip
Pink, R. Bonner


Cary, Sir Robert
Hornby, Richard
Pounder, Rafton


Channon, H. P. G.
Howell, David (Guildford)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Cooke, Robert
Hunt, John
Prior, J. M. L.


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Cordle, John
Iremonger, T. L.
Ridsdale, Julian


Corfield, F. V.
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Roots, William


Costain, A. P.
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Royle, Anthony


Crawley, Aidan
Kershaw, Anthony
Russell, Sir Ronald


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Scott, Nicholas


Crowder, F. P.
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Sharples, Richard


Cunningham, Sir Knox
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Sinclair, Sir George


Dance, James
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Stainton, Keith


Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Lloyd, Rt.Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Summers, Sir Spencer


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Tapsell, Peter


Doughty, Charles
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Eden, Sir John
Longden, Gilbert
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Loveys, W. H.
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Elliott, R.W.(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Tilney, John


Errington, Sir Eric
MacArthur, Ian
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Farr, John
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fisher, Nigel
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain
Walters, Dennis


Gibson-Watt, David
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Weatherill, Bernard


Glover, Sir Douglas
Mathew, Robert
Whitelaw, William


Glyn, Sir Richard
Maude, Angus
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Goodhart, Philip
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Goodhew, Victor
Mawby, Ray
Woodnutt, Mark


Gower, Raymond
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Worsley, Marcus


Grant, Anthony
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)



Grant-Ferris, R.
Miscampbell, Norman
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Grieve, Percy
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Mr. Jasper More and


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Mr. Reginald Eyre.


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh





NOES


Abse, Leo
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.


Allen, Scholefield
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Archer, Peter
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Gregory, Arnold


Armstrong, Ernest
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Grey, Charles (Durham)


Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Dalyell, Tam
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)


Atkinson, Norman, (Tottenham)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.


Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice
Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)


Beaney, Alan
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Davies, Robert (Cambridge)
Hamling, William


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Dempsey, James
Hannan, William


Bessell, Peter
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Binns, John
Dickens, James
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Bishop, E. S.
Dobson, Ray
Haseldine, Norman


Blackburn, F.
Doig, Peter
Hattersley, Roy


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Hazell, Bert


Boardman, H.
Eadie, Alex
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)


Booth, Albert
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hooley, Frank


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
English, Michael
Hooson, Emlyn


Bradley, Tom
Ennals, David
Horner, John


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Ensor, David
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)


Brooks, Edwin
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Faulds, Andrew
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Brown, Bob (N'c'the-upon-Tyne, W)
Fernyhough, E.
Howie, W.


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)


Buchan, Norman
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Hynd, John


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Foley, Maurice
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)


Carmichael, Neil
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Ford, Ben
Janner, Sir Barnett


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Fowler, Gerry
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Chapman, Donald
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)


Coe, Denis
Freeson, Reginald
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)


Coleman, Donald
Gardner, Tony
Kelley, Richard


Concannon, J. D.
Garrett, W. E.
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Conlan, Bernard
Garrow, Alex
Judd, Frank







Kenyon, Clifford
Oakes, Gordon
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Ogden, Eric
Short, Rt.Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
O'Malley, Brian
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Oram, Albert E.
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Lawson, George
Orbach, Maurice
Silver-man, Julius (Aston)


Leadbitter, Ted
Orme, Stanley
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Oswald, Thomas
Slater, Joseph


Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Small, William


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Owen, Will (Morpeth)
Snow, Julian


Lipton, Marcus
Padley, Walter
Spriggs, Leslie


Loughlin, Charles
Paget, R. T.
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Luard, Evan
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)


Lubbock, Eric
Pardoe, John
Stonehouse, John


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Park, Trevor
Swain, Thomas


Mabon Dr. J. Dickson
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Thornton, Ernest


McBride, Neil
Pavitt, Laurence
Thorpe, Jeremy


MacColl, James
Pentland, Norman
Urwin, T. W.


Macdonald, A. H.
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Mackintosh, John P.
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.
Wallace, George


Maclennan, Robert
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
Wellbeloved, James


McNamara, J. Kevin
Price, William (Rugby)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


MacPherson, Malcolm
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Whitaker, Ben


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Randall, Harry
White, Mrs. Eirene


Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Rankin, John
Whitlock, William


Manuel, Archie
Redhead, Edward
Wilkins, W. A.


Mapp, Charles
Rees, Merlyn
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Marquand, David
Richard, Ivor
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Mason, Roy
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Mellish, Robert
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Millan, Bruce
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Winnick, David


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Molloy, William
Rodgers, William (Stockton)
Woof, Robert


Moonman, Eric
Roebuck, Roy
Wyatt, Woodrow


Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Rose, Paul
Zilliacus, K.


Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William



Morris, John (Aberavon)
Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Moyle, Roland
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)
Mr Harry Goulay and


Newens, Stan
Sheldon, Robert
Mr. Ioan L. Evans.


Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.

Question put, That the Clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 229, Noes 144.

Division No. 220.]
AYES
[7.2 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Conlan, Bernard
Garrow, Alex


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.


Allen, Scholefield
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Archer, Peter
Grossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Gregory, Arnold


Armstrong, Ernest
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Grey, Charles (Durham)


Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Dalyell, Tam
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)


Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.


Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice
Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)


Barnett, Joel
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Hamling, William


Beaney, Alan
Davies, Robert (Cambridge)
Hannan, William


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Dempsey, James
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Bessell, Peter
Dickens, James
Haseldine, Norman


Bishop, E. S.
Dobson, Ray
Hattersley, Roy


Blackburn, F.
Doig, Peter
Hazell, Bert


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b's)
Heffer, Eric S.


Boardman, H.
Eadie, Alex
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)


Booth, Albert
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hooley, Frank


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
English, Michael
Hooson, Emlyn


Bradley, Tom
Ennals, David
Horner, John


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Ensor, David
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)


Brooks, Edwin
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Faulds, Andrew
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Fernyhough, E.
Howie, W.


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Hoy, James


Buchan, Norman
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Hughes, Emrys (Ayshire, S.)


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Hynd, John


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Foley, Maurice
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Carmichael, Neil
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Ford, Ben
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Fowler, Gerry
Janner, Sir Barnett


Chapman, Donald
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Coe, Denis
Freeson, Reginald
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)


Coleman, Donald
Gardner, Tony
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)


Concannon, J. D.
Garrett, W. E.
Jones, Dan (Burnley)




Judd, Frank
Newens, Stan
Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.


Kelley, Richard
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Kenyon, Clifford
Oakes, Gordon
Short, Rt.Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Ogden, Eric
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
O'Malley, Brian
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Oram, Albert E.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Lawson, George
Orbach, Maurice
Slater, Joseph


Leadbitter, Ted
Orme, Stanley
Small, William


Lestor, Miss Joan
Oswald, Thomas
Snow, Julian


Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham. N.)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Spriggs, Leslie


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Owen, Will (Morpeth)
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Lipton, Marcus
Padley, Walter
Steele, Thomas (Dumbartonshire, W.)


Loughlin, Charles
Paget, R. T.
Stonehouse, John


Luard, Evan
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Swain, Thomas


Lubbock, Eric
Pardoe, John
Swingler, Stephen


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Park, Trevor
Taverne, Dick


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Thornton, Ernest


McBride, Neil
Pavitt, Laurence.
Thorpe, Jeremy


MacColl, James
Pentland, Norman
Urwin, T. W.


Macdonald, A. H.
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Mackintosh, John P.
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R, E.
Wallace, George


Maclennan, Robert
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
Wellbeloved, James


McNamara, J. Kevin
Price, William (Rugby)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


MacPherson, Malcolm
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Whitaker, Ben


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Randall, Harry
White, Mrs. Eirene


Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Rankin, John
Whitlock, William


Manuel, Archie
Redhead, Edward
Wilkins, W. A.


Mapp, Charles
Rees, Merlyn
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Marquand, David
Richard, Ivor
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Mason, Roy
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Mellish, Robert
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Millan, Bruce
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Winnick, David


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Robinson, Rt.Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Molloy, William
Rodgers, William (Stockton)
Woof, Robert


Moonman, Eric
Roebuck, Roy
Zilliacus, K.


Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Rose, Paul



Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Morris, Charles R, (Openshaw)
Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)
Mr. Harry Gourlay and


Morris, John (Aberavon)
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)
Mr. Ioan L. Evans.


Moyle, Roland
Sheldon, Robert





NOES


Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n &amp; M'd'n)
Eden, Sir John
Lancaster, Col. C. G.


Batsford, Brian
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Errington, Sir Eric
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Bell, Ronald
Eyre, Reginald
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Farr, John
Lloyd, Rt.Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'field)


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Fisher, Nigel
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)


Biffen, John
Gibson-Watt, David
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)


Biggs-Davison, John
Glover, Sir Douglas
Longden, Gilbert


Blaker, Peter
Glyn, Sir Richard
Loveys, W. H.


Bossom, Sir Clive
Goodhart, Philip
McAdden, Sir Stephen


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Goodhew, Victor
MacArthur, Ian


Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Gower, Raymond
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Braine, Bernard
Grant, Anthony
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Grant-Ferris, R.
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt. -Col. Sir Walter
Grieve, Percy
Mathew, Robert


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Maude, Angus


Buck, Antony (Colchester)
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Bullus, Sir Eric
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Mawby, Ray


Burden, F. A.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Campbell, Gordon
Hawkins, Paul
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Carlisle, Mark
Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Miscampbell, Norman


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
More, Jasper


Cary, Sir Robert
Heseltine, Michael
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)


Channon, H. P. G.
Higgins, Terence L.
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Cooke, Robert
Hill, J. E. B.
Murton, Oscar


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Corfield, F. V.
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Costain, A. P.
Holland, Philip
Nott, John


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)
Hornby, Richard
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Crawley, Aidan
Howell, David (Guildford)
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver
Hunt, John
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Crowder, F. P.
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Cunningham, Sir Knox
Iremonger, T. L.
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Percival, Ian


Dance, James
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Pink, R. Bonner


Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Pounder, Rafton


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Kershaw, Anthony
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Digby, Simon Wingfield
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Prior, J. M. L.


Doughty, Charles
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Quennell, Miss J. M.







Ridsdale, Julian
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)
Walters, Dennis


Roots, William
Summers, Sir Spencer
Weatherill, Bernard


Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Tapsell, Peter
Whitelaw, William


Royle, Anthony
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Russell, Sir Ronald
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Scott, Nicholas
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret
Woodnutt, Mark


Sharples, Richard
Tilney, John
Worsley, Marcus


Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
van Strautaenzee, W. R.



Sinclair, Sir George
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Stainton, Keith
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek
Mr. R. W. Elliott and




Mr. David Mitchell.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Iain Macleod: On a point of order. You had indicated, Sir Eric, that you would call new Clause 8, which is the last remaining Clause of this Committee stage. It raises, however, a small point, much smaller than those on which we have divided the House, and it might be for the convenience of the House if we do not move new Clause 8. That would complete the Committee stage of the Bill and make it possible for the Government to interrupt business when they wish.

Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.

ARBITRATION (INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT DISPUTES) [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to implement an international Convention on the settlement of investment disputes between States and nationals of other States, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any sums required to meet obligations of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom arising under that Convention.
Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — ARBITRATION (INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT DISPUTES) BILL [Lords]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir ERIC FLETCHER in the Chair]

Clauses 1 to 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 6 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(GOVERNMENT CONTRIBUTION TO EXPENSES UNDER THE CONVENTION.)

5. The Treasury may discharge any obligations of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom arising under Article 17 of the Convention (which obliges the Contracting States to meet any deficit of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes established under the Convention), and any sums required for that purpose shall be met out of money provided by Parliament.—[Mrs. White.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mrs. Eirene White): I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The effect of the new Clause is to reinstate Clause 5 which, as it is concerned with expenditure, was not included in the Bill when it came to us from another place. I have already explained that it is not expected that any great expense will in fact be incurred, but we have a contingent liability.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time and added to the Bill.

Schedule agreed to.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended, considered.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Queen's consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified]

7.20 p.m.

Mrs. White: All that I need say after the rapid progress which we have made is to thank the House, on both sides, for their assistance in this matter. The Bill will be of great assistance to international investment. It includes no controversial principles, and we are fortified in the belief that the House will give it a Third Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with an Amendment.

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — TRIBUNALS AND INQUIRIES BILL [Lords]

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

New Clause.—(PROCEDURAL RULES FOR CERTAIN TRIBUNALS.)

In section 8 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1958, at the end of subsection (3). there shall be added the words 'and the reference to a Minister includes a reference to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue'.—[The Attarney-General.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

The Attorney-General (Sir Elwyn Jones): I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
It might be convenient. Mr. Deputy Speaker, if, with this new Clause, we also discussed new Clause 5.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): With the leave of the House, I think that new Clause 5 could conveniently be considered with this new Clause.

Sir John Hobson: On a point of order. The Notice Paper which I have obtained from the Table of the House contains only the new Clause moved by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and no new Clause 5. I find it difficult to understand how we are to take the two together.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I think that the Attorney-General was referring to Amendment No. 5 rather than new Clause 5.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: On a point of order. Could you please explain what is happening, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Attorney-General wishes to take Amendment No. 5 with the new Clause. That can be done only with the consent of the House.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Further to my point of order. I understood from the notice posted in the Members' Lobby

that the Prime Minister was to make a statement at 7 o'clock.

Hon. Members: Approximately.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is it by reason of the rules of the House that we must go through all this legislation first; in other words, can we take our time over this or is it because the statement is not ready to be made?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We are proceeding with the Orders of the Day.

The Attorney-General: In moving the new Clause, with which we are discussing Amendment No. 5, I need not detain the House for long.
Section 8 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958, puts Ministers—and, in Scotland, the Lord President of the Court of Session—under a duty to consult the Council on Tribunals before making or approving procedural rules for any of the tribunals listed in the First Schedule to the Act. It has come to the Government's notice that the Board of Inland Revenue is not under this duty. This is because Section 8 refers to "Minister" and this expression is defined by Section 14(1) of the Act as including
… any Board presided over by a Minister …".
That expression is not wide enough to include the Inland Revenue.
It seems possible that at the time the Bill which became the 1958 Act was in draft it was not thought likely that the Inland Revenue would have to make any such procedural rules as are contemplated by Section 8. However that may be, there seems no good reason why the Inland Revenue should not be in the same position as other Government Departments, and these proposed alterations will achieve that end.

Mr. Ian Percival: So far, this evening is one of disappointment. I thought, when the Bill was called for debate how gratifying it was to see so full a House to consider it, even at this late stage. It is disappointing that at least a few hon. Members were not here for this purpose alone. And then my joy was complete when the Attorney-General rose and said that he proposed to move the two new Clauses together, remembering that the only other new Clause on the


Notice Paper is that standing in the names of my right hon. and learned Friends and myself. I thought at the time that that was too good to be true.
However, depite these disappointments, I am pleased to tell the House that we welcome the new Clause, because it does, as far as it goes, extend and widen the ambit of consultation necessary in certain cases of the work to which the Bill refers. Later, I will venture to express the hope that the ambit of consultation in certain matters relevant to the Bill should be extended so as to include this House, but I would be out of order in venturing that far at this stage.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time and added to the Bill.

Clause 1.—(EXTENSION OF 1958 ACT TO FURTHER STATUTORY INQUIRIES AND HEARINGS.)

Mr. Percival: I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 6, at the end to insert:
'after the elapse of one month from the coming into operation of this Act'.
According to the Notice Paper, Mr. Speaker, you have been good enough to select this Amendment and Amendment No. 2, which indicates that Amendments No. 3 and 4 might conveniently be discussed with Amendment No. 2. My hon. Friends and I would be agreeable to the four Amendments being discussed at the same time.

The Attorney-General: I agree with that suggestion. Indeed, I commend it.

Mr. Speaker: If the House has no objection, so be it.

Mr. Percival: This series of Amendments has the objective of certain Amendments which were moved in Committee. At the same time, these proposals overcome the objections which were advanced by the Attorney-General to the earlier Amendments. As I understood that debate, the Attorney-General did not quarrel with the merits of the objectives, but with the manner we had chosen for achieving them, because, he said, they created difficulties of timing and definition. I hope that by telescoping—which is the word I was looking for a few minutes ago—that part of what I want to say

I do not fail to do justice to the Attorney-General's arguments in Committee.
7.30 p.m.
As I said, he put forward the grounds there that our Amendments would create difficulties of timing and administration. It is to be hoped that this House will always be chary of arguments based on administrative convenience, especially when its own opportunities for control of the Executive are being whittled away on that ground, an all to frequent an occurrence. Nevertheless, in arriving at these our latest proposals as set out in the Amendments now under discussion we have—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is very difficult for an hon. Member to make a speech to the House when there is so much conversation.

Mr. Percival: Mr. Speaker, I was saying that I hoped that the House would always be chary of arguments based on administrative convenience especially when the opportunities of the House to control the Executive are being opposed on these grounds, but, nevertheless, as I was saying, in arriving at these our latest proposals as set out in these Amendments we have given greater consideration to the questions of administration put forward by the Attorney-General in Committee as being objections to our previous Amendments.
The question of timing, the other ground called in aid by the Attorney-General, was, we felt, much more valid an objection to our proposals, and is largely the reason why the proposals we now put forward are substantially different. I hope to satisfy the House, in quite a short time, that the Amendments which we are now discussing do meet all the valid objections whether they be based on administration or timing.
It would, perhaps, be convenient if I were now to say what I am not going to say and then I can get on to what I am going to say. Amendments No. 3 and No. 4 are consequential. Subsection (3) of the Clause raises an entirely different question from that which is dealt with in subsection (1). We felt that rather than complicate what we were seeking to do, which is to improve the Bill, nothing more, nothing less, by seeking also to have full provision as to when


Section 12 should apply or not, it was better to leave that to the discretion of the Ministers, and not complicate our other arguments by getting into one about that. That being so Amendments No. 3 and 4 are purely consequential on Amendments No. 1 and No. 2. Therefore the Ministers are left under subsection (2) with discretion to say to which Section 12 should apply.
We on this side of the House are, and always have been, and have always made it clear, fully in sympathy with the object of this Bill. Potentially, it is a very useful one. But the operative word here is "potentially". As was said in another place, it may mean a great deal or it may mean very little indeed. How right that observation was. This Bill itself does not bring a single inquiry or hearing within the purview of the Council on Tribunals.
Nothing happens under this Bill till an order is laid and one can see what will happen when the battles have been fought out between the Ministers—and we fully understand there are some—who want to bring inquiries into the purview of the Council on Tribunals and the Departments who still do not want that to happen; then orders will have to be laid saying which inquiries are to go within the purview of the Council.
But the battle will be over by then. We on this side of the House say this is entirely wrong, that it is the wrong approach, that the right approach is to include all inquiries and hearings except such as are expressly excluded by order. It may be asked, what difference does it make whether an order is one including or excluding—it comes to the same thing in the end? In a way that is true. From the point of view of administration that may well be so.
We are told that there are at present some 200 inquiries and hearings which do not come within the purview of the Council. It is an astonishing figure. However, as long ago as May of this year the Lord Chancellor said that as a result of the work then done it was thought that about 150 were fit for inclusion and about 50 were not. So, even then, quite a long way had been travelled in deciding which should come in and which should be out. In Committee, the Attorney-General thought a recent check

had confirmed those earlier figures. Therefore there appears to be no doubt about it that we have at last got to the stage of having an Order and an idea of how many we put out and how many go in. The Attorney-General also said that there was still much to be done when all the answers, on what must be presumed to be the final stage of the preparation, have been received—already from two-thirds of the Departments; that much preparatory work had been done.
It would seem, therefore, that there may perhaps at the outset be something like 20 doubtfuls. If as long ago as May there were 150 which were appropriate and about 50 which were not appropriate and that has been confirmed by a recent check, and two-thirds of the answers from the Departments are already in, then it appears reasonable to assume that the area of doubtfuls has been very well whitted down already, and so I take the figure of, say, 20 doubtfuls, which appears to be fairly generous against the background of those figures.
If that is the situation, or if the situation is anything like that, then it may very well be that, so far as administration is concerned, it makes little or no difference whether one does this by way of inclusion or exclusion—with one possible difference. The one difference which may be implicit in our proposals in so far as there are the doubtfuls is that the administrators might have to make their decisions on those doubtful ones a little more speedily, but even the Attorney-General may agree that that would be no bad thing.
So much for administration. It is very difficult to see why it would make any substantial difference, but when one looks at the position of this House, the question of whether the orders are to be orders including or orders excluding makes all the difference in the world, and it is with the position of this House in relation to these matters that we on this side are now principally concerned. It is true that under the Bill as it stands this House would have the right to pray against orders made under it, but who, one may ask would wish to pray against an order bringing an inquiry within the purview of the Tribunal? It is a wholly illusory right.
What this House wants and ought to have—and we express the hope that it might be given it even at this late stage


—is the opportunity to express its views about the inquiries which are to be excluded, not the inquiries which are to be included about which it is unthinkable that there could be any difference of opinion. Under the procedure provided in this Bill this House will not have that opportunity. If I am wrong about that, no doubt the Attorney-General will correct me, but I do not think I am. The right to pray, which is the only right that the House will have on this Bill, is an illusory right in the circumstances of what we are considering, for, as I say, no one could conceivably wish to pray against an order bringing an inquiry into the purview of the Council. Of necessity, if this Bill stands in its present form, all will be decided outside this House and it will not really be brought to the House at all unless a Prayer is laid.
All will be decided outside. That is bad. We shall have no oportunity either to propose inclusions or to criticise or oppose exclusions. This is not just a matter of words or of making a debating point—far from it. It is very bad when one has that situation, and it is a situation that this House should not accept if there be any practical alternative. In our view, there is such an alternative ready to hand—indeed, so ready to hand that this House could debate it, pass it and use it in a very short space of time.
The evil here arises from the choice of including orders instead of excluding them. In Committee we proposed the simple remedy of reversing the process. There is no evil in simplicity. Quite often some of the simple things are the best. But we suggest here that that proposal was perhaps a little too simple. The principal objection raised by the Attorney-General was that in that case it would be necessary to postpone the operation of the Bill until the exclusions were finally decided. The effect of that might be that the one thing we wanted to happen, namely, that certain inquiries and hearings would come within the purview of the Council, might be put off. That is a good objection and it is one which we have faced. I hope to satisfy the House that these Amendments meet that objection fairly and squarely.
Here I must refer to the wording of the Amendments. I think this will show how closely knit these Amendments are

and why I took the liberty of suggesting that it might be for the convenience of the House to discuss them all together. Amendment No. 1 could not be shorter or more simple. It gives a month locus poenitentiae, or simply for making up one's mind before anything happens. That did not seem to be unreasonable. The end of the world will not come if no inquiry is to come before the purview of the Council for a month. But it will enable the Attorney-General to decide. It will give him a month for that purpose.
We are not unmindful of the fact that in more spheres than one a month goes very quickly; in fact, in both spheres in which I have the honour to speak from time to time a month is considered but a short time, though it may be that the present dynamic Government would manage to do a great deal in a month, including deciding the 20 doubtful points which they have been considering since May. However, in case it is not enough, Amendment No. 2 provides that if they are still in doubt, Ministers may make a blanket order excluding for three months those on which they have not yet made up their minds. Then in the remainder of the three months they must make up their minds. It is not much to expect them to do. Having made up their minds, they can then make orders of exclusion without limitation of time.
7.45 p.m.
We submit that the advantages are both obvious and substantial. But lest they may not be quite so obvious to some as they are to those who have had the opportunity to consider and draft them, I should like to give a word of explanation of how they would work in practice. Let us suppose that within the first month Ministers have made progress and have reached the stage of dividing the 200 into three lists—those that are definitely in, those that are definitely out, and those which are neither in nor out but are doubtful. It does not seem much to ask the Ministers to reach that stage within the first month. At the end of the first month they will be in no difficulty as to the first list of those that are in. Without any further action on their part, those that are in will automatically come within the purview. All that they will be bothered about will be those which are out and those which are not yet in or out.
Here there are two alternatives. The Ministers could either lay one order including all of these—those which they have decided are out and those on which they have not reached a decision—or they could Lay final orders relating to those on which they have made final decisions, and one, blanket order under the first part of the proviso setting out the doubtfuls as to which they want to preserve the position for three months. In either event this House would then have an opportunity to discuss on a Prayer the merits and demerits of the exclusion.
I suggest there are two real advantages here. First, especially if the course were adopted of laying an order just for the doubtfuls, the House would be given an opportunity to discuss something before the final decision had been reached. I believe it is certainly right that the House should be given an opportunity to discuss matters like this. It is even better if the right can be given to discuss them before a final decision has been taken. It is pleasant to find the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), who does not usually think much of what lawyers have to say, apparently agreeing with part of what I am saying. I hope that we may have some support from him later.
The second advantage is that it would give the Departments concerned the opportunity to hear the views of this House, and even—dare I venture to say?—consider the advice offered in and by this House. I hope that we have not yet reached the stage where it is to be assumed that we neither wish to have that advice nor to pay heed to it.
The Attorney-General said in Committee that there would be difficult decisions to be made on some of the inquiries in the 200. Is that not all the more reason for using a procedure which would enable the difficult cases to be discussed in the House, so that Members may express their views, and the Ministers and Departments concerned may have the benefit of knowing those views and such other views as could be given before they reach their final conclusions? All who have the interests of the House at heart would feel that those opportunities to enable the House to express its views and have its views considered, which are the heart and soul of the

Amendments, are precious things that should be given the most careful consideration.
I have been dealing with what has to be done within a month to preserve the position. Within the rest of the three months the final decisions could be taken and implemented by orders. That is the procedure we ask the House to adopt. It is very difficult to see any administrative difficulty or objection to that, other than the fact of someone having to make up his mind in three months. If he is taking longer the spur which could be given by the Amendments may be very useful.
The Attorney-General was courteous enough to give a full reply in Committee. He referred to the following part of our proposals and I want to add not repetition but a further point about it: in the case of final orders we propose that each inquiry or class of inquiry should be the subject of a separate order. The Attorney-General suggested that this would lead to a plethora of orders. I am not sure whether he gave full weight to the fact that in our proposals we referred to exclusions, whereas he was referring to inclusions. It is to be hoped that the number of inclusions will far exceed the number of exclusions and that there will not be so many exclusions that to deal with each by a separate order would lead to a plethora of orders.
A much more serious issue is at stake than the number of orders. It is the right of the House to voice its criticisms, and what is at stake is the right of the House to vote against something it does not like. Unless the Government depart from the procedure provided in the Bill and adopt the Amendments the House will be completely hamstrung in both respects.
The Attorney-General said in Committee that our proposals were too wide and would even include Private Acts of Parliament. Not having the resources of all the Departments to assist us in working out whether that would necessarily be a bad thing, we have not had time to decide on that, but as a sort of quid pro quo, in the hope that the Attorney-General may offer something in exchange, we have excluded—in the last proviso in Amendment No. 2—inquiries held under powers conferred by Private Acts of Parliament.
The Amendments in total are designed to improve the Bill, to put teeth into it and to strengthen the hands of those who want to see it work. Many people have paid lip service to it. Our proposals would produce a Bill which went into operation straightaway after the period of one month. We are doing much more than paying lip service to it in two principal ways; first, by a change of emphasis. Under our procedure all the emphasis is upon justifying exclusions. That is right and proper since that is where the emphasis should lie. That gives a great deal of strength to the hands of those who want to see the Bill properly implemented.
Secondly, our procedure introduces an element of Parliamentary control and ventilation. Let Ministers who seek to justify the exclusion of inquiries set up by them state their reasons here, and satisfy the House that they should be excluded. If they have good grounds they will have no difficulty, but at least the arguments would be ventilated. If their grounds are bad they may be discouraged from coming here. If, nevertheless, they come, we can at least express our views and vote if we feel sufficiently strongly about it.
Those are the objects of the Amendments. I hope that the House will appreciate and accept, even at this late stage, that it is in its long-term interests that those objects should be regarded as important and be achieved.

Mr. Michael Foot: I must first apologise to the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) for not having heard the first few minutes of his speech, but if they were as persuasive as the last three quarters of an hour it would hardly be necessary for me to intervene. I do so because I believe that the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised a series of extremely important matters which should be adequately examined by the House as a whole and I am most grateful to him for having done so.
If I follow his lead in this matter he must not take it as a precedent, but in my opinion this is the most formidable example of Parliamentary opposition we have seen from the Official Opposition in the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman has always been my candidate for the Conservative Party leadership, and he has greatly strengthened his support by

what we have seen today. I therefore feel that on both sides of the House we owe him a debt of gratitude for the way in which he has moved the Amendment. I hope that he will not take my remarks as being in any way flippant, because he raised many points to which I would like to refer.
The hon. and learned Gentleman said that some of the points he made were obvious. If he had not told us we would not have known, but I shall leave those points on one side. Those matters which he said were so evident that he did not think it necessary to underline I will not attempt to underline either. I shall leave it to the good sense of the House. We do not need to go over those parts of this argument which are accepted on both sides of the House, and even the Liberal Party—though we have not had its support thoughout the evening—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where are Liberal hon. Members?"]—will concur.
The most powerful part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's case was his argument for trying to ensure that if action were to be taken under the Measure the Government should have to explain their views to the House. It is on that that I wish to speak. He specified the time limits prescribed in the Bill and in the new Clauses—a lapse of one month under new Clause No. 1 and a period of three months under new Clause No. 2.
8.0 p.m.
The hon. and learned Gentleman argued that either the period of one month or the period of three months should be sufficient for the Government to make up their mind and to come to the House and state their view. I entirely agree with him, particularly as it has been said of some members of earlier Administrations that once they had firmly made up their minds on a matter there was no power on earth which could make them change it. I should not apply this to members of the present Administration, but perhaps in years to come we shall not be blessed with the same Administration. There might be changes made in the present Administration, for all I know. The personnel might be changed after ten years or so. Some of us might welcome it. Some of us might think it superfluous that any changes should be made over decades. But it is


always conceivable, even in this Government, that there shall be changes in personnel.
Therefore, we seek to provide what might or might not be done, not only by Her Majesty's Government in their present immaculate shape, but by a future Government, even a Labour Government precided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) in some future decade or century. We may need safeguards which are not necessary today.
I am glad to see the Attorney-General back here. He is an extremely busy man. I wish that he would tell us what he has been doing recently. That would make it unnecessary for me to make a speech or, what would be even more satisfactory, quite unnecessary for the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) to make a speech. That would have produced unanimity on both sides of the House. It is a great courtesy to the House that the Attorney-General should speak on this Bill, which none of us understands, particularly after the proceedings we have had so far. We should like him to apply to these problems the same good will and acute intelligence which he applies to these other problems. If he gets a little mixed up in what lie says—any little indiscretion which he may commit—we shall be only too happy to accommodate him. It might relieve the unutterable boredom of the proceedings with which we are now blessed.
There are many other Bills which could have been pushed through in this time. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Iron and Steel Bill."] That is another Measure which I should like to be adequately discussed. This is why I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Southport in his proposals.
I am amazed—to put it as strongly as I can—and staggered that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not draw attention to the fact that one of the reasons why we have this shoddy legislation to which Amendments have to be proposed at this late hour is that this Bill comes from the House of Lords. What can we expect of Measures started in another place? It does not seem to have examined even a trivial Bill of this sort.
One of the main cases made for the House of Lords is that these elderly gentlemen who have been given life peerages to preside over our fortunes should be able to sit down coolly without pressure being put on them from any quarter and examine every Bill with the utmost consideration. They have all the time in the world to apply to every Measure which comes before them. They are not pressed for time as we are in this House. They do not have one Bill pouring after another.

Mr. Quintin Hogg (St. Marylebone): Mr. Quintin Hogg (St. Marylebone) rose—

Mr. Foot: I give way most willingly to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He speaks not only as the Member for St. Marylebone but as an ex-member of the House of Lords.

Mr. Hogg: Although it must seem odd that Bill coming down from the House of Lords need structural changes at this late stage, the hon. Gentleman has no idea what a mess Bills coming up from this House look like in another place.

Mr. Foot: I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be so wanton in his strictures on this House of which he is an honourable Member. He should restrain his tongue, if he can. What I am discussing is the Bill before us.
We have been told by the hon. and learned Member for Southport, speaking for the official Opposition, that this is a Measure in which the most obvious matters have apparently been overlooked. "Obvious" was the word which he used. The claim which he made for these Clauses was that they were obvious. They may be obvious to him. Why were they not obvious in another place? These matters should have been dealt with before. We have a crowded legislative programme, although nobody would hardly believe it, and we expect Measures of this nature to be dealt with entirely by the House of Lords. Instead, at this late date, it is only because of the vigilance and opportunism of the hon. and learned Member that the matter has been remedied.
For all we know, this Bill might have swished through the House of Commons without these matters being dealt with. Then we should never have known what were the facilities under the Bill for


Ministers to report on them. All this business of whether these matters should be included or excluded would have gone forth without any consideration having been given to them.
I hope that after the experience we have had tonight no one will again tell us that the House of Lords is a fitting instrument to act as a sieve for these Measures. I hope that no more Measures will be started there.

Mr. Archie Manuel: I hope that my hon. Friend, who is showing great discernment in telling us about what the Bill contains, will not sit down before he deals with that most pungent part of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) in which he dealt with the question of the inclusions versus the exclusions. This was the strongest part of his speech, and we must give it the weight which it deserves.

Mr. Foot: Powerful though that part was, there was an even more powerful part. What the hon. and learned Gentleman said was that the purpose of the Clauses was to put teeth in the Bill. Why should we have been set this toothless, gutless Bill? That is what we have had served up to us. The Attorney-General is a very busy fellow. He has many things on his mind and many matters to attend to. He has to waste his time by being brought here to try to assist in putting teeth in a Bill with which the House of Lords should have dealt properly.

Mr. Percival: I am sure that in his enthusiasm the hon. Gentleman will not overlook the fact that from wherever the Bill came it is a Government Bill and that if it has no teeth in it this is attributable, not to where it came from, but to who started it.

Mr. Foot: The hon. and learned Gentleman must not provoke me to move on to other pleasant themes. I am critical not only of the House of Lords but of the Government. He need not think that that is an inhibition on me. I applaud many of the Government's Bills, but sometimes they make a mistake. Occasionally, Measures coming from the House of Lords are tolerable, but when these two get together, look what they achieve. The hon. and learned

Gentleman need not think that he can distract me from discussing the Clauses by a remark of that nature.
This is a tuppenny ha'penny Bill which has been shoved in by the Government. I do not know whether they do it to fill out time, but every now and again we find a Bill on the Order Paper which comes on late at night and which nobody takes much notice of. All of us know that because we are all waiting for another pronouncement proper consideration is being given to the Bill. I am not begrudging the hon. and learned Member for Southport the opportunity which he sees of ensuring that the House debates it properly. I am not criticising him in any way. But he knows as well as any of us that had it not been for the accident of other events for which we are all waiting this Measure might well have gone through the House at 11, 12 or 1 o'clock. It might have been——

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Toothless to the end.

Mr. Foot: Yes, toothless to the end.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I am listening with very great interest to my hon. Friend, but I am not quite clear about his attitude to the Amendments. Does he regard them as tigers' teeth or artificial dentures?

Mr. Foot: I do not use filthy language like that.
I try to discuss these matters in the same plain legal terms which were used by the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
When I was nodding agreement with something that he said, he observed that I was not always in agreement with lawyers—or something to that effect. I could express my opinion about lawyers very much more strongly than that. The greatest journalist who ever sat in the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons was William Hazlitt, who said that the only thing that gave him any respect for the House of Commons was the contempt that it had for lawyers.
That is an opinion that I generally hold, except for the exclusion of the Attorney-General, who is in a class all on his own. As I indicated previously, he would not be wasting his time here if we ordered our business properly.

Hon. Members: What about the Solicitor-General?

Mr. Foot: I am not sure whether the Solicitor-General is still a member of the Government or not. Once he gets out of the Government I shall really tell him what I think, but while he is still there the Government might accuse me of making a personal attack. I think that, according to his lights, the Solicitor-General is doing fairly well. I am not criticising the Solicitor-General, and nobody will distract me into attacking him. There are lawyers enough on the opposite side of the Committee to distract me if I were to be distracted.
All I say is that a Bill of this character should be properly treated and cared for before it is sent to us, and, despite all the temptations from hon. Gentlemen opposite, this is an occasion when, to my mind, the arguments are so balanced that I must come down on the side of the Government.

The Attorney-General: My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), in a delightful intervention, has spoken of the rôle of lawyers in Parliament. I would respectfully remind him that there have been lawyers in the House of Commons right through the history of the House. So far as I know, the only exception to that was a Parliament which excluded them, and it has gone down in history as the Mad Parliament.
In his spirited intervention, my hon. Friend has shown a detailed knowledge of the technicalities of this Measure, which evoked the usual admiration that I have for him. Whether there are to be teeth in the Bill or not, it is splendid to find that there is no lack of bark in my hon. Friend.
What I found surprising in this debate, which started in such dramatic circumstances—never did I expect to see so eminent and large an audience for the intruction of this modest Measure—was the gibe of the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival), who moved the Amendment, about the Government considering this matter since last May. This gibe comes, indeed, curiously from the Opposition. The fact is that the Government's object in bringing the Bill forward is at long last to meet complaints which have been voiced by the Council

of Tribunals in successive annual reports since 1960 about the inadequacy of the present definition of a statutory inquiry. The Council complained about that in 1960, 1961, 1962 and 1963, and yet the watchdogs for the individual, who are supposed to be sitting on the other side of the House, did precisely nothing about it in those years.
8.15 p.m.
I want to make it very clear at the outset that the Government have introduced the Bill precisely because they want to strengthen the rôle of the Council on Tribunals as a watchdog for the individual. We have before Parliament now the Bill creating a Parliamentary Commissioner, and this is part of the Government's rôle in introducing measures to protect the rights and liberties of the individual citizen, and this Bill is aimed at remedying the defect in the Act dealing with inquiries. It is the Government's intention to give effect to the principle of Clause 1 of the Bill as early as possible by making the necessary orders bringing within the jurisdiction of the Council on Tribunals all discretionary inquiries which are appropriate for this treatment.
As the hon. and learned Member has pointed out, there are as many as 200 different kinds of discretionary inquiry at the present time, and it is thought, after the studies that have already been made, that about 150 of these could be brought within the scope of the Council on Tribunals and that about 50 ought not to be brought within that scope.
It might help if I indicate the kind of discretionary inquiry which we think ought not to be brought within the ambit of the Council on Tribunals. Perhaps I can give an illustration from inquiries which are held by the Ministry of Labour under the Conciliation Act into the causes and circumstances of differences between employers and workpeople, where the essential rôle of the Ministry of Labour is a conciliating rôle and where rules and regulations which would be appropriate to other kinds of inquiry would obviously be quite inappropriate. So the Government are proposing to introduce orders bringing within the scope of the Council on Tribunals the discretionary inquiries which ought so to be brought.
The purpose of the four sets of Amendments tabled is to bring within the scope of the Council on Tribunals all discretionary inquiries except such as may be excluded by Ministerial order. We are anxious to introduce this Bill and bring it into effective operation as soon as possible, and with that object in mind the various Departments concerned have been working very hard in the last few months considering the discretionary inquiries which ought to be brought within the scope of a Ministerial order or orders to be made under Clause 1.
It is not an easy task. Parliament has frequently conferred on Ministers the power to hold inquiries into a great variety of different matters, but not imposed a duty to do so. Our Statute Book over the last half-century is littered with these provisions, and it is not at all easy to be sure that one has ascertained all the relevant statutory provisions. The matter is made more difficult by the fact that some of them are, as I said in Committee, to be found in Private Acts of Parliament. I agree that the Opposition have tried to deal with the question of Private Acts by one of their Amendments to the Bill, but, unfortunately, they appear to have gone too far.
If we were to accept the Amendment which is proposed, it would have the effect of covering all hearings and inquiries held under any power conferred by any Private Act of Parliament. We think that that goes much too far. It would make it impossible for Ministers to bring within the scope of the Council on Tribunals any hearing or inquiry held under a private Act.
The main objection which has to be met against these Amendments, in my submission, is that they go the wrong way about tackling the problem. As I have said, it appears that about 50 different types of inquiry will probably be unsuitable for inclusion in a Ministerial order. Under the terms of the Opposition Amendments, it would be necessary for 50 separate orders to be made by Ministers. That would be an appalling expenditure of time, money and effort, and I submit that it is quite unnecessary.
My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor will be consulting the Council on Tribunals in the near future, and I think that

he has already sent it copies of the first draft Order. He will be sending it a first list of the orders which it is proposed should be excluded from the Council's jurisdiction, and that list will be made up under the headings of the responsible Departments, so that the Council on Tribunals, which will be quick to take advantage of this, will be discussing with the Departments concerned any inquiry which it thinks has been wrongly included in the Order or in the list.
I do not need to remind the House that it is the Council on Tribunals itself which has asked for this additional burden to be placed on its shoulders. It is right that it should have an opportunity of discussing both the draft Order and the draft list. I am not suggesting for a moment that this House should not have the principal and, of course, the leading responsibility in determining the content of subordinate legislation, but, in the circumstances of the problem, it seems more sensible and practical now to let the Council on Tribunals first tackle the work with its own particular expertise and experience.
Accordingly, the view of the Government is that there is no reason why the operation of this Act needs to be postponed for a month after Royal Assent. The drafting of the first Order is already far advanced. We want to get on quickly with this additional protection for the citizen which it is the object of the Bill to confer. It is intended that a second Order should be made two or three months after Royal Assent to deal with any inquiries on which a decision has not been made in time for inclusion in the first Order.
These Amendments will have merely a delaying effect on a useful Measure to bring within the scope of the Council on Tribunals a wide range of inquiries which are presently excluded. Whatever the motive of the Amendments may be, the effect of them will undoubtedly be merely to delay bringing about the introduction of a valuable piece of legislation.

Sir J. Hobson: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman deal with this point? If certain inquiries were to be included within the scope of the Bill which subsequently required to be excluded, it would not matter, because the Bill only gives the power to make orders,


rules and regulations, and that power need never be exercised. It does not matter if all inquiries are put into the Bill and there is some delay in excluding certain of them, because, in the interval, neither the Lord Chancellor under Section 7A nor the Council on Tribunals under Section 1 need take any action.

The Attorney-General: As I say, the effect of what is proposed by the Opposition is that, if all these discretionary orders are included in an all-embracing provision, exclusion involves the introduction of a wide range and a large number of Prayers, and that would be contrary both to the convenience of the House and to good administration.
I wish that I could feel that this subject has the undivided attention of the House. I repeat that I cannot recommend the Amendments and that they would be contrary to the purpose which unites both sides of the House in seeing that the Council on Tribunals is given the powers for which it has asked for the last six years.

Mr. Graham Page: I am sure that the House is grateful to the right hon. and learned Attorney-General for the explanation that he has given, which was far more clear than that given by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). The hon. Gentleman assured the House that he was discussing the Bill, but no one would have known unless the hon. Gentleman had told us, although he was holding the Bill in his hand at one stage. It was a very entertaining speech. The hon. Gentleman managed to say nothing so brilliantly that it is quite astonishing that he is still below the Gangway.
During his discussion of the Amendments, the hon. Gentleman forecast a change, but he hardly commended himself to his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister by his attack on the Bill and by his support of the very good Amendment moved by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival). His attack on another place will not commend himself to any promotion there, although I am sure that he would not wish to go there, anyway.
This is a very simple point. I start from the basic fact—

Hon. Members: Get on.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I understand what is in the minds of hon. Members, but we must get on with our business.

Mr. Graham Page: I am obliged to you, Mr. Speaker.
In considering these Amendments, I start from the basic fact that all inquiries should come within the scope of the Council on Tribunals. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, with his contempt for lawyers, might find himself—and I wonder whether he might not have said what he did had the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General been in the Chamber at the time——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) must come to the Amendment.

Mr. Graham Page: Mr. Speaker, I was directing my remarks to the Amendment so ably moved by my hon. and learned Friend.
The Amendments endeavour to ensure that the House will know what statutory inquiries do not come within the scope of the Council on Tribunals.
As the Bill stands, it is possible for the Government to decide that a great number of statutory inquiries shall not come within the scope of the Council on Tribunals. The purpose of the Amendment is that the House shall be informed of those statutory inquiries which the Government have decided shall not come within the purview of the Council. Surely there is every reason why this should be brought before the House in the Statutory Instruments which are suggested in these Amendments, namely, that the House should know the decisions which are made? As the Bill stands, it means that there will be many statutory inquiries which will still be not subject to any rules of procedure, and still be in a raw state so far as the Council on Tribunals is concerned.
Under these circumstances, I commend the Amendment to the House, and I trust that it will be accepted.

8.30 p.m.

Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth: My purpose in intervening in this debate is precisely the same as that of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). I hope that this will be the last time, as well as the first time,


that this occurs, and it may be that in pursuance of this purpose he and I could join as Tellers in supporting the Amendments against the Government.
To my mind, these Amendments are really largely drafting. When I look at the principal Act, I do not find that it contains words which are to be found in the Clause as drafted. The Clause contains the words
references to a statutory inquiry",
but when I read the principal Act I do not find any reference to a statutory inquiry. All that I find are certain words in parenthesis, namely,
being the tribunals constituted under or for the purposes of the statutory provisions specified in that Schedule…
That does not seem to be a proper definition of what is contained in the principal Act.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must address himself to the Amendment.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: Mr. Speaker, I thought that it was necessary to introduce what I was going to say by a reference to these matters, because, as I see them, the Amendments are intended to give a different kind of definition from that proposed in the Bill, and therefore one must look at the Bill to see what it is trying to define. And, as it is a Bill which is defining by reference, one has to look back to the principal Act, and it is there that one finds the words which it is seeking to define. I hope that I have made myself clear.
The Bill proposes to add certain tribunals other than those referred to in the principal Act.—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Sir H. Lucas-Tooth: I hope that my potential fellow teller will not find himself too much out of order at this stage of the debate.
The Bill proposes to add certain other tribunals to those included in the principal Act. Its method of doing so is by permitting such other tribunals as may be proposed by Ministers of the Crown, and it defines who those Ministers are—the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State.
The Amendments propose an alternative method. They propose to add all tribunals, and then to allow Ministers to knock out, so to speak, those which they do not wish to include. This seems to me a nicer and more enjoyable method of doing it, and I hope that the Amendment will commend itself to the House.

The Attorney-General: I am afraid that the learning of the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) was not successfully conveyed to this side of the House. I venture to think that the House may not be principally preoccupied at this moment with this fascinating Measure. But in its concern for the rights of the individual citizen, the House may nevertheless be refreshed by the knowledge that this little Bill is intended to advance the citizens' protection.
In its wisdom Parliament has created a vast plethora of administrative tribunals and has given Ministers power to introduce varying inquiries, but no duty to create such inquiries, and there is this enormous range of discretionary inquiries which it has been found exceed two centuries. Were the purpose of my speech merely to take up the time of the House it might very well be done by listing the enormous quantity of such discretionary inquiries.

Mr. Speaker: We are not yet on the Third Reading. The right hon. and learned Gentleman must direct his remarks to the Amendments.

The Attorney-General: Mr. Speaker, I was applying what I am pleased to call my mind to the Amendments, to the best of my ability in the circumstances presently prevailing. Whilst the Amendments propose ought to be unattractive to the House, for the reasons that I have already indicated, namely, that they would have the practical effect merely of delaying a Measure which both sides of the House welcome. They would involve reversing the considerable administrative procedures which have already been carried out through the different Departments in ascertaining what inquiries are amenable and suitable for inclusion within the category of the inquiries which should come within the ambit of the council and which should not.

Mr. Graham Page: The right hon. and and learned Gentleman has said that


this would give an opportunity to consider what inquiries should not be included. In fact, as the Bill stands is it not true that the House will not have an opportunity of commenting on the exclusion; that it will be entirely for the Government to decide without any reference to the House which of those plethera of statutory inquiries will be excluded?

The Attorney-General: These matters will take time, and the initial stage will be the process of embodying in an order the inquiries which manifestly call for immediate inclusion within the ambit of the Council's work. If, when this operation is concluded, there are indications that, for some protective reason, any Ministry is excluding discretionary inquiries which ought to be included, there is no lack of Parliamentary processes by which such a Ministerial device could be called to account, and the Minister himself called to account.
Accordingly, I invite the House to reject these Amendments as serving the opposite purpose to that which the mover has in mind, namely, quickly to extend the protection which the Council on Tribunals gives to a citizen who may be affected by the proceedings of inquiries and tribunals of inquiries.

Amendment negatived.

Orders of the Day — Title

Amendment made: In line 6, after 'Scotland', insert:
'to apply section 8 of that Act to procedural rules made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue '.—[The Attorney-General.]

8.40 p.m.

The Attorney-General: I beg to move,
That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I commend the Bill to the House. It has received most detailed consideration in another place, about which some very direct observations were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) earlier, whose admiration for another place he has qualified on more than one occasion. He combined his qualification tonight, I am sorry to say with a swipe at the lawyers. That is a wholly unworthy exercise because, as the House well knows, some of the finest contributions to debate in the House are made by lawyers.
I am afraid that what I have just said is not exactly calculated to win the unanimous support of my hon. and right hon. Friends behind me, but I think that in regard to the Bill they will give their full support, as the House as a whole will do, because its purpose is to give additional strength to the Council on Tribunals.
I should like to pay a tribute to the work of that Council since it was introduced. It has provided a most valuable protection for the citizen, and its recommendations as to the procedures to be conducted in inquiries have undoubtedly resulted in a considerable improvement in those procedures. The Government shows no reluctance in encouraging the Council on Tribunals in its work.

Sir Stephen McAdden: On a point of order. I wonder if you would be kind enough to help me, Mr. Speaker. I am anxious to know what the Attorney-General is saying. I cannot hear a word of what he is saying.

Mr. Speaker: I appreciate the difficulty of the House, but it would be courteous if hon. Members would listen to the speeches which are being made.

The Attorney-General: I am sorry that I cannot be adequately heard. I pray that the fault is not entirely mine and that no hardness of hearing is beginning to affect any hon. Member below the Gangway. As I was saying, when I was so appropriately interrupted, the House will join with me in taking this opportunity of paying tribute to the work of the Council on Tribunals, under the distinguished chairmanship of Lord Tenby, who has done a great deal to improve the position of the citizen before Tribunals of Inquiry. Therefore, the citizen has certainly in the past tended to be vulnerable and, perhaps, exposed in a way in which he is not in the ordinary processes of the courts. The supervision that has been exercised by the Council on Tribunals has been of immense value.
8.45 p.m.
It is now proposed that the wide range of discretionary inquiries which by reason of the inadequacy of definition of the Act were previously excluded will now be brought within the ambit of the Council's work. I know that the House will want


to give a fair wind to a Measure whose sole purpose is to strengthen the rôle of the Council on Tribunals as a watchdog for the individual.
The Council has asked—

Mr. Charles Doughty: Because the work of this House is largely contributed to by lawyers, perhaps I may be allowed to ask the Attorney General two questions. Will he see that in future proper legal aid is given to those who appear before tribunals; that those who, like Attorneys General and Solicitors General, are somewhat, if only slightly, tainted with politics, can still appear at these tribunals, whatever the Committee may say?

The Attorney-General: I had better not say anything about the latter part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention. We are here dealing with the ordinary tribunals and inquiries and not with the particular tribunals of inquiry set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. As the hon. and learned Gentleman has pointed out, legal aid does not extend at present to proceedings before tribunals of inquiry. This is a matter to which my noble Friend has been giving the most careful and anxious consideration.
The problem is one of money. Legal aid is proving to be a great social service, but unhappily it is also—and perhaps inevitably—proving to be a very costly one. I do not say that the cost is disproportionate to the service, but the public purse is not bottomless for the purposes even of so admirable a social service as legal aid. Therefore, I fear that I can give to the House no undertaking—and I should be in great trouble with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer if I did—that legal aid will be extended to the proceedings before tribunals of inquiry, important though the issues are.
The fact is that most of the tribunals do, I think, bear in mind the difficulties that an unrepresented person may have, and there is certainly no history or record known to my noble Friend or to myself of injustices being caused on that account by reasons of these proceedings—

Mr. Robert Maxwell: I am not a lawyer, but I wonder whether

my right hon. and learned Friend can say whether these tribunals of inquiry could be used as instruments for making our Civil Service a little more efficient and useful to the nation?

The Attorney-General: I do not know what has prompted that somewhat fierce stricture on a Civil Service whose qualities are unrivalled in any part of the world. We have already taking place an inquiry, with the most distinguished membership, into the structure of the Civil Service. I doubt whether that inquiry would come within the ambit of this Measure. I see no grounds for such an inquiry, however, and it would have been interesting to discover why my hon. Friend put that question to me, save that he must have done so in the friendly spirit of giving me something to speak of in this situation.

Mr. Percival: The right hon. and learned Gentleman was getting along so rapidly that I was afraid he would finish before I had the chance to catch his attention. I wonder whether, before he finishes, he would deal with two matters which, to use his own words, in all this plethora of words have not yet been touched upon.
In moving the Third Reading of the Bill, the right hon. and learned Gentleman might like to tell us exactly what kind of Parliamentary control there is under the procedure which he is now commending to the House. Secondly, he has referred—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The intervention must be a brief one, otherwise the hon. and learned Member will exhaust his right to speak in this debate.

Mr. Percival: I will be very brief, Mr. Speaker, if I might have, say, another 30 seconds. The Attorney-General has referred to the fact that the Council will be consulted about exclusions. Will he assure us that the House will be informed of any instances in which the Council does not agree with an exclusion?

The Attorney-General: I expect that that could certainly be done. I will certainly look into the point that is made. At present, as I have said, the Council on Tribunals is examining the list of inquiries which ought to be included in the order and the list of exclusions. I


will certainly consider the suggestion that the House should in some way be informed what the exclusions are. The first task, however, is to get moving with the inclusions so that the procedure applicable to them may take effect quickly.
As to the form of Parliamentary supervision over these proposals, the Statutory Instrument which will introduce the order listing the inquiries that are to be brought within the jurisdiction of the Council on Tribunals will come before the House and will be debated by the House, as will all other subsequent orders. In those circumstances, there will be full opportunity for the House to consider these matters with care.>

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. John Silkin.]

RHODESIA

8.54 p.m.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about Rhodesia.
Since my announcement of 27th April that informal talks were to be held the House has been extremely patient and has recognised my inability to give information on the progress of the talks, which it had agreed would be confidential. The time has now come when the House must be put in full possession of the facts as they now stand, more than seven months after Mr. Smith indicated to the Governor his desire to engage in informal talks.
Altogether, three series of talks were held in London and Salisbury at official level before the first visit of my right hon. Friend the Commonwealth Secretary to Salisbury with my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General in September.
These talks were mainly directed to two main issues. First, the method and conditions of a return to legal and constitutional rule in Rhodesia and the determination of the question with whom official negotiations could subsequently take place. Second, an informal exploration in detail of constitutional problems

to see what amendments would be needed to the 1961 Constitution to give effect to the six principles which had been the basis of discussions with the legal Rhodesian Government up to 11th November, 1965.
Practically the whole of the discussion during this period was on the problem of an ultimate constitutional settlement, though the representatives of Her Majesty's Government made it plain at the outset and repeatedly warned that a settlement would have to be reached on the problem of return to legality, and warned, too, that before independence could be granted a fair and free test of Rhodesian public opinion would have to be carried out under a constitutional Government.
Mr. Smith, through his officials, insisted on discussing the constitutional proposals first, indicating that he needed to be satisfied about the ultimate constitutional settlement before being ready to discuss what he regarded as a purely procedural matter of the return to constitutional rule. We insisted that before any settlement could be reached both issues would need to be dealt with.
By the time of the visit of my right hon. Friends, in September, no progress had been made in the constitutional talks. Nor, indeed, though my right hon. Friends' visit was extremely useful in informing a wide section of Rhodesian political opinion of our requirements and proposals for a settlement, was there any advance whatsoever on either the constitutional settlement or on the conditions for a return to legality during my right hon. Friends' visit.
Mr. Smith and his colleagues were left by my right hon. Friends in no doubt of our intention to act within the terms of the Commonwealth Prime Ministeres' communiqué and no doubt at all about the fact that, while adequate time remained for a settlement if the will were there, the programme envisaged in the communiqué did not admit to unlimited time nor to wasted time. It was not, in fact, until my right hon. Friend again took the initiative in visiting Salisbury on November 25th to 27th, just as we were getting very near the operation of the timetable of which Mr. Smith had been informed, that any signs of movement were detected.
My right hon. Friend returned a week ago with a report indicating for the first time a real possibility that a satisfactory agreement might be reached on the constitutional issues which would give full guaranteed effect to the six principles on which we insisted. The report also indicated, very much for the first time, some sign of movement on the question of return to legality. Mr. Smith had, in fact, indicated that he was prepared to consider returning to the legal 1961 Constitution if a satisfactory constitutional settlement could be agreed. This was said last week for the first time. Mr. Smith said, in fact, to my right hon. Friend that, given a satisfactory solution, he would be prepared to consider surrendering what he called his independence by returning to the legal 1961 Constitution—provided that a satisfactory constitution and settlement could be agreed.
Despite all disappointments—and I can put it no higher—of every round of discussions which we, and indeed our predecessors, have had with Mr. Smith and his colleagues, the Government decided that before we finally had to report to the House, with all the consequences that would ensue, that there was no prospect of an agreement, one last effort should be made.
Accordingly, last Tuesday Mr. Smith was informed that my right hon. Friends and I would be prepared to meet him, on the clear understanding that the purpose of such a meeting would be to reach a final settlement, if it proved possible to reach agreement both on the terms of a constitutional settlement and on satisfactory arrangements for the return to legality. He was informed that I should have full power for this purpose and that it was essential that Mr. Smith should have similar powers and should be authorised to reach a final agreement, if the basis for a settlement were seen to exist.
As the House knows, we met him, and the Governor of Rhodesia, who was accompanied by the Chief Justice, for two days of intensive talks in H.M.S. "Tiger" at the end of last week. I will not weary the House with the successive twists and turns of these discussions—[HON. MEMBERS: "Twists?"] I shall be ready to answer any questions from hon. Gentlemen opposite when I have finished—but

their outcome was that we both signed at midnight on Saturday, in the presence of the Governor, a working document setting out in detail all the essentials for a settlement.
On the amendments necessary to the 1961 Constitution which would be required to give effect to the six principles, Mr. Smith and I reached complete agreement, as hon. Members will see when the White Paper is available later this evening. The House will see that the requirements of the six principles have been met in full with effective constitutional and external guarantees.
On the return to constitutional rule, again the document sets out in detail what is required. The programme envisaged that an Order in Council would be made immediately to give the Governor the constitutional powers required for setting up an interim Government. He would then have appointed a broad-based interim Government, to be headed by Mr. Smith, and this Government would have been, in effect, on a legal basis by the middle of this week.
Mr. Smith and I agreed, subject to a condition which he laid down and which I will come to later, possible names for the five non-Rhodesian Front Ministers, European and African, who would be included in this interim administration. The existing Legislature would have been dissolved and the Governor would have exercised full legislative authority. During this period the test of acceptability under the fifth principle would then have been carried out and, provided that it had been completed, fresh elections would have been held not later than four months from the date of restoration of constitutional rule.
Agreement was also reached, without conditions and again in detail, about the procedure, as distinct from the timing, for testing the acceptability of the proposals for an independence constitution to the Rhodesian people as a whole. This was to be done by Royal Commission, to be appointed by Her Majesty's Government, after consultation with the new Rhodesian Government. Censorship was to have been lifted and freedom of political association and activity on democratic lines would have been permitted.
We agreed, also, on a procedure to give effect to the requirement laid down in the


Commonwealth Prime Ministers' cormmuniqué for the release of political detainees. To deal with this, a judicial tribunal was to be appointed by the legal Rhodesian Government, but including a British representative nominated by the Lord Chancellor, to consider the detention and restriction of persons on security grounds.. Such detention and restriction would have been authorised only if the tribunal was satisfied that the persons concerned had committed, or had incited the committing, of acts of violence or intimidation.
It was agreed that if, as a result of the report of the Royal Commission, Her Majesty's Government were satisfied that the proposed constitutional settlement was acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole, then immediate effect would be given to it by legislation, which we undertook to introduce in this House, the agreement to be further underwritten by a treaty binding both of us to maintain the Constitution. This treaty, as I explained to Mr. Smith, would be registered, as we are required to register it, with the United Nations. And any breach of this treaty, such as a coup d'état, either by European or by African extremists, would entitle us—indeed, I feel, would require us—to seek from the United Nations mandatory sanctions under Chapter 7, sanctions not necessarily confined to economic sanctions.
If, as a result of the report of the Royal Commission, Her Majesty's Government decided, however, that the proposed Constitution was not acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole, there would still have been a legal Government under the 1961 Constitution with whom we could have explored alternative new proposals for an independence Constitution.
After all that has happened, the House will understand the anxiety I expressed to Mr. Smith that in these circumstances, if complete agreement had been reached, Mr. Smith, if the Royal Commission reported adversely, might perhaps again illegally declare independence. Nor did Mr. Smith's reply to my expression of anxiety do anything to dispel those suspicions. This would mean that while we had ended sanctions, as we were ready to do this week if Rhodesia returned to constitutional rule, he might once again return to illegality, an easier

operation, you might think, than the reimposition of sanctions. Therefore, I thought it right in these circumstances to leave him in no doubt that if this were to happen we would go immediately and without any preliminaries to the United Nations for effective mandatory sanctions.
Equally, I thought it right to warn him that in conditions of a second U.D.I. he could no longer in all circumstances count on, still less abuse, the assurance I had given before the first declaration, that we would in any circumstances not use force, for example, to reinforce economic sanctions. And in the condition envisaged in a breach of the Treaty to which I have just referred, including a possible coup d'etat, either by European or African extremists, equally we would not consider ourselves bound by our earlier pledge that force would never be used. Mr. Smith understood this.
By 5 p.m. last Saturday it was open to Mr. Smith to sign an agreement with me covering all the issues providing for an immediate return to constitutional rule, the immediate unwinding of our sanctions provisions, and the urgent initiation of all the procedures leading to independence on terms which I would have no hesitation in recommending to this House as fully implementing all the six principles and that of the guarantees, internal and external, that this House has the right to demand, and as equally implementing the terms of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' communiqué. This was the position at 5 o'clock last Saturday.
Mr. Smith who had throughout indicated his willingness—within the authority he had been given—to reach agreement on the terms of an appropriate independence Constitution, continued—as he had every right to do—to reserve his position on two points related to the return to constitutional rule.
First, while he was prepared to discuss the procedures for an immediate return to legality—which he had told my right hon. Friend a week earlier he was prepared to consider—he had yet to make up his mind whether he could accept a situation in which he gave up what he called his independence with only the hope and not the certainty that the independence Constitution we had agreed


would be shown by the Royal Commission to be acceptable to the Rhodesian people as a whole. While he was confident that it was acceptable to the Rhodesian people as a whole there was, he felt, the possibility that the final verdict might go against him. He continued to insist that the illegal Government should continue, sanctions being lifted, until he knew where he stood as a result of the Royal Commission's report.
I told him that a fair and convincing test of acceptability would be quite impossible in circumstances where an illegal régime was possessed of emergency powers and executive control including broadcasting and television and that we were not prepared to grant even interim recognition which he demanded, particularly since it was clear—as he made clear—that if the verdict went against him he would insist on maintaining his present illegal powers indefinitely. No British Government and few hon. Gentlemen could have agreed to such a proposal. Equally, though we discussed in great detail the composition of the broad-based Government, including the outgoing as well as the incoming personalities, he said that he had not yet accepted the principle that a broad-based Government should be created.
It was understood that having the document as a whole now before him, he would inform me later in the evening whether it was acceptable in its entirety or not. However, after a delay of some hours, Mr. Smith informed me that he had no authority whatsoever from his colleagues to give his agreement on either of these two points, or even to commend our agreed working document to his colleagues. Knowing his difficulties—and I did not underrate them—I agreed that instead of reaching a final settlement which I had authority to do—and I understood that he had come on the same basis—he should return to Salisbury without any commitment on his part either to sign the document as a whole, or even to agree to recommend it to his colleagues. It was, therefore, agreed that both documents should be considered by the British Government, and by Mr. Smith and his colleagues, on the clear understanding that it must be accepted or rejected as a whole, and a straight answer

given, "Yes" or "No", by this morning. It was, therefore, understood and agreed that there could be no question of further amendment of the document which expressed clearly a decision on the principles and issues of policy which have been discussed time and time and time again between the British Government and the Rhodesians for many months—indeed, many of them for many years—and which could not, as we both agreed, be fluffed by any form of words which sought to evade that decision.
Before he returned to Salisbury, Mr. Smith, in the presence of the Governor, was left in no doubt about the consequences of any refusal or failure to accept the document. He was told that the consequences set out in paragraphs 10A and 10B of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' communiqué—on the conditions laid down in those paragraphs—would be set in motion. He was told what this would mean for Rhodesia, and of the immediate dangers for Africa and even more widely, if he and his régime, whose claim to legality has not been recognised by a single country in the world, insisted in continuing on a course which has earned the condemnation of practically the whole of mankind. He was left in no doubt about the action which we would take, and also the action which would be taken internationally. Equally he was left in no doubt about our resolve—however long it might take—to bring to an end a situation which, when he created it, he said would be a nine-days' wonder.
The House knows Her Majesty's Government announced yesterday their acceptance in its entirety of the document Mr. Smith and I worked out together. This evening the House will have heard with sadness that that same document has been rejected by Mr. Smith and his colleagues. They have confirmed that they insist on maintaining their illegality until, in conditions in which no free expression of Rhodesian opinion would be possible, a Royal Commission has reported and independence has been granted.
They have announced that they have accepted the principal changes in the 1961 Constitution which are set out in the document, as a basis for independence. Their refusal to accept the settlement as a whole stems from their insistence on


their refusal to return to legality unless they themselves can remain in power while the agreed constitutional settlement is being tested by Rhodesian opinion. The implications of this are obvious, and no one in this House would be ready to accept those implications. Indeed, if reports from Rhodesia which have come this evening are correct, they have also rejected any concept of sharing power with representatives of a wider section of Rhodesian European opinion and they have rejected the proposal that two respected Africans, whose names were agreed between Mr. Smith and myself, should become part of the interim broad-based Government that we have proposed.
At least the House, and the world, have been left in no doubt about the isues which are at stake, after all that has happened since last Thursday. It is clear that power for its own sake and the insistence of retaining that power in the hands of a small unrepresentative minority have dictated the outcome.
I believe that it was right to try to reach a settlement which we could defend consistently with the principles we have proclaimed and consistently, equally, with our honour both in this House and before the bar of world opinion. No one—including many in Rhodesia who have previously put their trust in that group of men—could condone their refusal to accept the settlement which would have provided for them an honourable way out of the situation that not we but the illegal régime created. For us to have accepted what they were demanding would have been a betrayal of the principles on which our own democracy is based and the principles to which the multiracial Commonwealth and the United Nations are dedicated.
When my right hon. Friends and I decided to hold this parley with Mr. Smith, we knew that some might say that we were mistaken to venture on such a task. I believe that we were justified in what we did. The fact that the hand we proffered has been rejected does not alter that conviction. From that rejection certain inevitable consequences must now follow in accordance with the programme that we agreed with our Commonwealth colleagues in September. Mr. Smith was clearly warned of this in terms he clearly understood.

He knew that we, the British Government and this House, were not prepared to suffer the destruction of our principles—or of the Commonwealth—for the sake of safeguarding from world opinion the actions of a small and irresponsible minority.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be flying to New York tomorrow to take personal charge, so far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, of the actions which must follow in the United Nations. My noble Friend, Lord Caradon, has been instructed to ask for an early meeting of the Security Council.
Mr. Speaker, I regret to have had to present this report to the House. [An HON. MEMBER: "The right hon. Gentleman did not have to."] I am prepared to face hon. Gentlemen opposite in a minute, and to face them with the consequences of their attitude. Until then, I have to say that I regret that I have had to present this report to the House. I believe that we could have done no more.

Mr. Edward Heath: The House is grateful to the Prime Minister for coming here tonight and making a statement after the efforts he has been making during the past few days, which, I am sure, the House will believe were fuly justified, and I thank the Prime Minister for making that statement.
The House will realise that the statement is one of the utmost gravity, as the right hon. Gentleman himself has emphasised. It will be a bitter blow to millions of people in this country and far beyond that it has not yet been possible to reach a negotiated settlement of this problem.
The situation, as I think the Prime Minister will agree, is a complicated one, judging from his statement, and it is in many ways, as far as Salisbury is concerned, also a confused one. I am sure, therefore, that the House would wish to consider the Prime Minister's statement most carefully, together with the White Paper which, we understand, is to be produced later this evening.
In the meantime, I ask the Prime Minister to clarify the position in what I think is one vital respect. Is it correct to say that the proposals in the working paper fell broadly into two parts, the first being proposals for the Constitution based on the six principles, on which the


Prime Minister's words were "The requirements of the six principles have been met in full, with effective constitutional and external guarantees." If that is so, I think that the House would agree that very great progress has been made, and this is a remarkable achievement.
Secondly, the other lot of proposals deal with the method of the return to legality, and it is here that it has not been possible to reach agreement. May I ask the Prime Minister this question on this vital point, which we have always emphasised ever since his statement of 25th January: what was he proposing should be the legal basis for the interim Government to which he proposed Rhodesia should return?
From reports on the tape tonight, it appears that it was being asked that the control of the Armed Forces and the actual appointment of Ministers should be placed under the Governor, and if this were to be under our own Southern Rhodesia Act, 1965, this would, therefore, be the direct responsibility in both cases of the British Government at Westminster, as I understand the situation. Is this what was being proposed?
While I fully recognise the point made by the Prime Minister about the request of Mr. Smith as far as their own powers in Rhodesia were concerned, could the right hon. Gentleman clarify the point as to what is he proposing for the future interim Government?
Finally, I am sure that the House would feel that where so much agreement has been reached on the constitutional procedures for the future, it would be a matter of the utmost regret if the dire consequences which are to follow, which the Prime Minister has foretold, were to come about as a result of differences about the return to legality on which the whole House was hoping that it would have been possible to reach agreement between the two Governments concerned which would satisfy the principles and requirements of both.

The Prime Minister: I can reply only by leave of the House.
First, may I say that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the statement which I have made is not only one of gravity, but one of some complexity. There is a White Paper available in the Vote Office, or it will be available in a

few minutes. I understand that that will have to be studied. I regret that, for reasons which he will understand, I was not able to send the right hon. Gentleman an advance copy of my statement. It was so late that we got final confirmation. I should have liked to have sent it to him.
The right hon. Gentleman said that it is clear that the argument falls into two parts and that progress was made on the constitutional issue—perhaps surprising progress. That progress was not made, not by one inch, during all the months that we have been discussing the matter since April, until my right hon. Friend's visit, on his own initiative, to Salisbury a week ago. [Interruption.] We have been talking since April and were willing to talk in January. No progress has been made by one inch on the Rhodesian side to a solution. There was no insistence throughout on a braking mechanism that even the right hon. Gentleman would not have accepted. It was not until my right hon. Friend's visit, during the last few days before the Commonwealth communiqué time-table began to operate, that there was this beginning of movement on the part of Mr. Smith and his colleagues.
It is a fact that after some very hard bargaining—we made a number of concessions, too, although none which I could not defend against the background of the six principles—it was only at the meeting this weekend that we were able to reach agreement here. But I think that it is wrong to suggest that we can separate these two, as the right hon. Gentleman seemed to be trying to do.
In the first place, in my view and that of my right hon. Friends, it is impossible to say that we could operate a free test which is required under the fifth principle which the right hon. Gentleman, my predecessor, insisted on with so much determination against a background of an illegal constitution, armed, as the Leader of the Opposition has said—I quoted this to Mr. Smith—with all the powers of a police State.
But, secondly, it is not only a question of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of making such a test which we argued with Mr. Smith. It is also the fact that if one is to hand over to Mr. Smith and his colleagues, as we were prepared to hand over, the responsibility for a future


Rhodesia, this must be based on trust as well as on the test to which I have referred. If he was not willing to agree to return to legality as a condition of that offer—which I know many people have condemned—I do not believe that one would have the conditions of trust which would justify his being given what no Government in this country has given in our generation, and that is the right of independence without majority rule.
We have a very distinguished record in that in successive Governments right hon. Gentlemen opposite as well as ourselves have over many years handed over to their own sovereignty one people after another, and we have always insisted on majority rule first in our lifetime, in the lifetime of most of us. If we have been prepared to hand over to Rhodesia, uniquely, independence without majority rule, I think that it requires some trust and some sense on their part that they are prepared to make some sacrifices. In this case the only sacrifice that we asked them to make was a sacrifice not of independence, but of an unreal dream world of a Walter Mitty independence which is recognised by no one except them.
There is not a Government in the world which recognises the 1965 Constitution. European Governments of various complexions have been expelling Mr. Van der Byl—known to some hon. Gentlemen opposite—because he did not carry a valid passport.
I hope that no hon. Gentleman opposite will claim that the Rhodesians have a legal independence under the 1965 Constitution. All that we were asking them to accept was that they should return to a legal constitution—under the same Prime Minister. That was all that we were asking. That should not have been difficult. Without that, I submit to the House, there is not the trust which would justify handing over to them responsibility for the conduct of the country and of guaranteeing the progress to majority rule over a period of years which was involved in our constitutional settlement.
The right hon. Gentleman asked what legal basis there would have been if Mr. Smith had accepted return to constitutional rule. The answer is, simply and plainly, the 1961 Constitution. That is

all—I will come to the military point in a minute—that we were asking of him, though—it is an arguable point but he and I agree—if he returned under the 1961 Constitution it would be appropriate to dissolve the Rhodesian Parliament, which would first require an Order, which would have been done under the 1961 Constitution in this particular. What would then have been involved would have been that the Governor would dissolve Parliament constitutionally, which would mean that the Governor could govern for four months without Parliament. In these circumstances we proposed that the legislative authority would be vested in the Governor, and in this he would be advised by his own constitutional Rhodesian Government
We required, also, that it would not be the existing purported Government with all the same members. I do not think that anybody in this House could have agreed to a Rhodesian constitutional Government including Mr. Dupont, who, during this year, has purported to represent the Queen as quasi-regent in Rhodesia. We would have had to insist on his removal. I would add that in my discussions with Mr. Smith there was no controversy about the removal of some of his colleagues.

Hon. Members: Cheap.

The Prime Minister: This is not cheap. This is a statement of fact.
I would hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite would insist that someone who had purported to be the Governor without the Queen's authority could not be a member of a legal and constitutional Rhodesian Government. If any of those hon. Gentlemen opposite who have enjoyed his hospitality, and have encouraged him in the course that he has followed, believe that he should have been a member of a legal constitutional Government, I hope that they will have the guts to stand up and identify themselves.
I return now to the other point raised by the right hon. Gentleman. It would have been under the 1961 Constitution, as it would have been under the powers of that Constitution, that the Parliament would have been dissolved. But, under the same Constitution, that would have


required an election in four months, during which we hoped that the Royal Commission would have completed its task. There would have been no question—and I know that this has worried the right hon. Gentleman for many months, and I have not been free to deal with it because of what I have said—and there has not been any question in any of our discussions with Mr. Smith from May onwards of direct rule, whether direct rule from Whitehall or direct Governor's rule. As I say, I know that that worried the right hon. Gentleman. I only wish that I could have made it clear. He knows why I could not.
As regards control of the Armed Forces, I hope that, now that there has been this break tonight, we shall not start using the facilities which Mr. Smith has for uncorrected means of disseminating information through Government-controlled radio and television and a Government-censored Press, to falsify the facts. We shall publish tonight in a White Paper the document which he and I agreed. I will tell the House now in advance—and hon. Members can study this for themselves—exactly what was involved in the control of Rhodesian troops.
There was no more in the document than that, while the Governor is and always was the titular head and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and while he would act as advised by his legal constitutional Government, we would have agreed with Mr. Smith—and he raised no difficulty about this—the appointment of a Defence and Security Council which would consist of the Governor, of the Ministers in the legal Rhodesian Government responsible for defence and for law and order, of the heads of the Armed Forces, who are Rhodesians, of the chief of police, who is a Rhodesian, and of one representative of the British High Commission.
If that is now being presented to Rhodesia so soon as being taking control of the Rhodesian Armed Forces, then I think that I am justified in some of the things which I have said about misrepresentation of the facts.
That would be for four months only—from now until independence. It would only be for this limited period while the Royal Commission was doing its task and

while this House, if the Royal Commission so reported, was carrying through the independence legislation. After that, the only reference to defence in the document—and we have agreed this—is that we would enter into discussions for a defence agreement between two sovereign countries.
How that can be represented as control over the Armed Forces, as I understand he is reported to have said tonight, I cannot myself comprehend, though we must always bear in mind, in the overheated atmosphere in Rhodesia, the possibility of being misreported, not least as I gather that he was addressing from outside his offices a crowd of exuberant and perhaps rather extremist supporters.
The right hon. Gentleman came finally to the point where he said that there are dire consequences resulting from this decision. I agree. That is why I so much deplore the fact that, when settlement was within our grasp, we could not get it because they insisted on a constitutional settlement based on "Heads I win, tails you lose". They had to give up their posture of illegality and enter into a legal constitution, and they said that they would not do that until they knew that they were to have legal independence on their own terms. That really is the point. They refused to accept the test of acceptability by the Royal Commission, and said they must hold on to what they have, or what they think they have, so that they could hold on to it for ever if the Royal Commission reported against them.
I am in no doubt where responsibility lies for this break, but I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is making too small a thing of this to suggest that we had agreed on all the big things about the Constitution and disagreed over a quibble about the return to legality. The question of the return to legality—[Interruption.] I was not suggesting that that is what the right hon. Gentleman said, but I think that it might have been deduced, from some of the noises from behind him when he said it. I know that he is not easily persuaded by those noises, but it is important that he should not be—[Interruption.] There is no doubt about the response given by some hon. Members to that statement by the right hon. Gentleman.
I am sure that when the right hon. Gentleman has had time to consider this—and it is only fair that he and the House should have time to consider it—he will feel that this is not a quibble over protocol. It is essentially a matter of principle that this House could not possibly justify handing to those who have voluntarily, for their own purposes, entered into a condition of rebellion, the fact that they should be free to end that rebellion, and end it only on conditions when they got what they wanted.

Mr. J. Grimond: Is the Prime Minister aware that many people will have heard with deep regret of the determination of Mr. Smith to persist in his illegal course of conduct? May we have it quite clear that he has refused all supervision from outside over the return to legality?
Further, may I ask the Prime Minister whether, now that he is taking the serious course of sending this matter to the United Nations, he is in a position to assure the House that if the United Nations agree to mandatory sanctions, they will be effective? I ask that because many of us feel that if we are to have sanctions we should be assured that they will this time be effective.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I am not sure to what the right hon. Gentleman is referring when he says that Mr. Smith has rejected all possible terms for outside supervision. The position is as I stated it. We were proposing to act in the mast constitutional way in accordance with the Constitution. We did not ask him to go and say to the Governor that he had sinned against the Constitution. We just wanted to authorise the Governor to say that since Rhodesia has no Prime Minister, or no Minister at all, the Governor on noting that vacuum should invite Mr. Smith to fill it on some of the conditions laid down. There was no outside supervision. The only outside supervision would have been, I think I am right in saying, the supervision of the test of acceptability of this proposition to the Rhodesian people as a whole, where Mr. Smith not only agreed, but suggested, that a Royal Commission should be appointed by Her Majesty's Government.
The only other element of supervision would have been the appointment by my

noble Friend the Lord Chancellor of one member, and one member only, of a tribunal otherwise appointed by the legal Rhodesian Government to supervise the release from detention of detainees whom it was considered safe to release and who were not there on any criminal charge.
It is our intention that the mandatory sanctions should be effective. I hope to have a chance of saying—I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I think that it is important to say this—that we have now, in accordance with our undertaking, proceeded, or shall be proceeding, to move in the Security Council for selective mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia. I am confident that, given their acceptance by the Security Council, all members of the United Nations will fulfil their obligations and will loyally apply the sanctions in question. This does not involve any of the issues which have been the subject of recent public comment.
The first step is to lay down the effective sanctions. If, and it is entirely hypothetical, any country were to decide that it could not conform with the United Nations' decisions, this would create a new situation, which in due course would no doubt be raised. It has not been raised yet. It is not raised this week. But the House must be clear that at the Commonwealth conference I had the fullest support from and understanding of my colleagues, particularly leading African statesmen, that we are committed to selective sanctions against Rhodesia only.
Moreover, they agreed with us that not only must we proceed step by step—and this is a lengthy process—in dealing with this situation, but also, as we said, and they agreed, that this must not be allowed to develop—they understood this—into a confrontation whether economic or military involving the whole of Southern Africa. As the House will join my Commonwealth colleagues in recognising, such a confrontation, economic—and economic might lead to military—could have incalculable consequences for Southern and Central Africa going far beyond the issues raised by the Rhodesian problem. Indeed, as I told my Commonwealth colleagues, it could rapidly dwarf the Rhodesian problem, and nothing would ever be the same in Central Africa


again, whether in Rhodesia or some of their own States. Certainly in these circumstances anyone in this House might predict the consequence that my Commonwealth colleagues accepted at this Conference, that in these matters we must continue to be in control of the situation.

Mr. Robert Maxwell: Can my right hon. Friend say what rôle South Africa played in these negotiations? Does he expect South Africa to comply with selective mandatory sanctions? Further, can he tell the House, now that we have regrettably had to hand this matter over to the United Nations, whether the United Kingdom is to bear alone all the economic consequences of these sanctions, and what steps Her Majesty's Government propose to take to alleviate the cost of these sanctions, which are inevitable?

The Prime Minister: So far as South Africa's actions in the last few days are concerned, I have no direct knowledge of these. We have been in touch with a number of countries—both inside and outside the Commonwealth—which might be affected, but I have no knowledge of what action or line they have taken. As for the future, it is entirely hypothetical to assume that South Africa will or will not take a particular line.
As for the bearing of the burden by this country, the burden that we have been bearing has been exaggerated—perhaps rather damagingly from the point of view of the impact on Southern Rhodesia. I had to point out to Mr. Smith that we had lost about £35 million worth of direct exports over the last year—very serious, and we all regret this—but, on the other hand, our exports have risen by £350 million in total in world markets—so it is possible to exaggerate the effect—although I have left out particular invisibles and certain other things.
As for our bearing the whole burden of economic sanctions, the purpose of making them collective and universal is to ensure that some countries which have been quietly cashing in—or nationals of friendly Governments who have been quietly cashing in—will now have to conform with the general situation. More effective sanctions will be possible, and a much fairer sharing of the burden.

Mr. Sandys: The Prime Minister's statement is a very grave one. I should like him to clarify one point, which he stressed. He said that the proposal was to return to the 1961 Constitution and that there was no question of asking for agreement on direct Governor's rule. I cannot reconcile that with the Prime Minister's statement that during this period the Governor was to have complete legislative power and that the interim Government were to have purely advisory functions. That, surely, is direct Governor's rule. It is the normal kind of rule which comes about in a Colony before it is established with full internal self-government. I should like clarification on that point.
All I would say is that the Prime Minister has told us that there was—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will ask questions at this stage.

Mr. Sandys: I did not hear what you said, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I asked the right hon. Gentleman if he would ask questions at this stage.

Mr. Sandys: On a point of order. I understood that we were on the Adjournment. I was making a very short speech. I can try to put it in the form of questions, but I did not think that it was necessary. Are we not on the Adjournment?

Mr. Speaker: Do not let me take away valuable time. We are on the Adjournment, but I think that we get a much wider expression of opinion if we have a number of questions.

Mr. Sandys: Is the Prime Minister aware that he has told us that complete agreement was reached on the basis for a future constitution for Rhodesia which fully satisfied the six points? Does he realise that the British people will need a great deal of convincing that he was right to throw that away on account of disagreement over the procedure during the four months' interim period?

The Prime Minister: On the right hon. Gentleman's first question, the answer is, yes, it would be a return to the 1961 Constitution. Parts of that are already suspended by Orders approved by this


House. We would have to reinstitute, for example, the power of the Governor to appoint the Prime Minister and other Ministers. The fact that there will be no Parliament is permissible under the 1961 Constitution. Parliament is currently in abeyance. Mr. Smith was rather keen on this as we were. The Governor would dissolve Parliament and within four months there must, under the Constitution, be an election. In those difficult circumstances it would be better for the broad-based Government not to have the particular Parliament which has been there up till now. This was no matter of controversy in H.M.S. "Tiger". It might be for the right hon. Gentleman, but if he is to the Right with Mr. Smith, he must get up and tell us.
That is the executive power. Regarding legislative power, it was thought it would not be likely that any legislation would be required during the period we are talking about. In case legislation was required—and I can see circumstances where it might be; for example, to deal with the work of the Royal Commission, the setting up of the Commission on tribunals, and things of that kind—we said we were prepared to clothe the Governor with legislative power by Order in Council approved by Parliament that the Governor, in exercise of that legislative power, would, apart from one or two exceptions, be advised by the legal 1961 Constitutional Government.
I think the right hon. Gentleman, when he studies this, will feel that it is, for all practical purposes, a return to the 1961 Constitution. We did insist that it should be a broad-based Government. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would have done the same. He knows some of the personalities involved. We have to re-create trust and confidence in that country, including the trust and confidence of the vast proportion of the population who had no vote or voice in choosing the Government that committed U.D.I.
Regarding the second question of the right hon. Gentleman, he was trying to suggest that while we reached agreement, as basically we did, on the Constitution—Mr. Smith has said so, and so it would appear to be so—he said that we threw away the possibility of an agreement by insisting on the conduct that was required

in the next four months. If the right hon. Gentleman treats so lightly the issue of the return to legality, which is a matter, however he may disguise it, in constitutional terms of rebellion against established authority—[An HON. MEMBER: "What is the penalty?"] It is not for me to apportion the penalty which he, if I may say so, with great distinction upheld for so many years at the Commonwealth Conference; if he now suggests it is a light matter that anyone taking account of it is throwing away a vital issue, he is sinking a long way from the position which he occupied only two years ago.
With his knowledge, and with my confirmation of that knowledge, he insisted with so much courage on these principles which we have been upholding, that for him to say that they could be carried out on the basis of an irresponsible illegal group of men who rejoice in their irresponsibility and illegality—[Interruption]—who have nothing to lose by accepting our invitation to return to legality, then I cannot understand the right hon. Gentleman's argument. The position was that I had the authority, the Governor had the authority, and Mr. Smith had the authority to accept this. Before he left H.M.S. "Tiger" on Saturday night, he could have accepted the Governor's invitation to become the Prime Minister of Rhodesia on the terms I have said. If the right hon. Gentleman says that on those terms I threw away the chance of a settlement, it means that the right hon. Gentleman has lost all sense either of the constitutional argument or of everything he has upheld as a Privy Councillor.

Mr. Archie Manuel: With reference to what has been said by the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), is my right hon. Friend aware that I believe that the great majority of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and the vast majority of the people in the country, will support my right hon. Friend for his unceasing efforts since last April to get Rhodesia to return to constitutional Government? Is he further aware that we applaud his last effort, and that many thousands of people in this country will be very sad tonight that he did not obtain the success he deserved?
Is my right hon. Friend aware that we recognise that sanctions are now the last stage, that many innocent people will be hurt by them, but that we are, nevertheless, delighted that he is sending my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to ensure that these sanctions are strong? And I hope that they will be as complete as possible in the circumstances now facing us vis-à-vis Rhodesia.

The Prime Minister: I particuarly welcome what has just been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel). He expressed doubts a fortnight ago about the visit of my right hon. Friend to Salisbury and it is generous of him now to say what he has said about my right hon. Friend's visit, and my own. It would not have been possible to have come near to agreement but for the visit of my right hon. Friend, as the whole House recognises, a fortnight ago, and I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said.
With regard to the fear that there will be widespread suffering as the result of the rejection of chances of settlement, I hope that my hon. Friend is wrong, but I fear that he may be right. Mr. Smith is in no doubt of the possible consequences of the action he has taken. I have always taken the view about Mr. Smith—some would say, contrary to all the evidence—that he allows himself to be pushed around by some pretty evil men. I still like to think of him as wanting this agreement to go through, but that he did not have the weight or the courage, or however one wants to put it——

Sir Cyril Osborne: Did the Prime Minister give him enough time?

The Prime Minister: I hope that the one thing that we shall not hear about now is time. In the first place, we were closeted together in H.M.S. "Tiger" for as long as we needed to reach agreement—for 48 hours—and on Saturday morning we could have pursued this. But he had told me—I thought that he had come with authority——

Sir Robert Cary: Sir Robert Cary (Manchester, Withington) rose—

The Prime Minister: I am answering my hon. Friend, and dealing with interruptions as I go along.
I had hoped that he had come with authority, but he told me that he had to go back——

Mr. Mark Woodnutt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It appears to me that the Prime Minister is making speeches. He has just said that he will deal with interruptions as he goes along. Can you explain precisely what the form is?

Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that the Prime Minister will be brief, as I want to allow more questions.

The Prime Minister: By leave of the House to speak again, the position about time—[Interruption.] If the House does not want to hear me—[Interruption.] If some hon. Members prefer to wallow in ignorance and prejudice they may do so, but I think that the rest of the House wants the facts.
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there was enough time. Mr. Smith made it very clear that he knew all the issues, understood the issue; that it was a question of whether his Government, as he called it, would or would not accept the issue. There was nothing more to argue about, or come to a possible compromise. We all tried—there was not one. Therefore, time would not have made any difference.
I can assure my hon. Friend that the sanctions will be thoroughgoing, that they will be effective, and that they will be selective.

Mr. Reginald Maulding: One question that seems important is that of the interpretation of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' communiqué. Is it now the position that all offers are withdrawn, and that the Government will not in future contemplate any proposal for independence before majority rule?

The Prime Minister: The position is—and, again, Mr. Smith understands this—that, as we said in the communiqué, if, and only if, we have the support of our fellow Commonwealth countries on the question of sanctions—not merely in introducing them, but in limiting them in the way we feel it right to limit them—we are prepared to go ahead on mandatory sanctions, and make that declaration. Mr. Smith has been under no


illusions. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman emphasised to him when in Rhodesia that this will be the position. Mr. Smith has since had three months to make up his mind about the kind of settlement he would accept. It really is no longer our responsibility. I had to tell him that we were not prepared at the end of the day to risk the very existence of the Commonwealth in September by demanding the right to have a last go at reaching a settlement with Mr. Smith. The Commonwealth very nearly broke up; it was very near indeed.
I am not prepared to recommend to this House that we let the Commonwealth break up for the sake of a very small group of people in a country whose electorate is only one-tenth of 1 per cent. of the population of the Commonwealth as a whole unless I feel that that small minority is right. Nothing that has happened in the last 72 hours persuades me that it is.

Mr. Stephen Hastings (Mid-Bedfordshire): In spite of the main disappointment, is it not undeniable that the Prime Minister has made very real and precious progress? In that case, and in view of the vast dangers which lie ahead if he takes this matter to the United Nations, I put this to him as a perfectly serious suggestion. Would not be possible to appoint the Royal Commission, which presumably would contain Rhodesians as well as people from this country, and let it go out there and be the judge of the free expression of opinion? I put this to the Prime Minister as a serious suggestion of a way out, even at this hour.
In the course of the Prime Minister's first statement, it seemed to me—perhaps I heard him wrong—that he said he had told Mr. Smith that in certain circumstances he would see fit to back up sanctions with appropriate force, or some such phrase. Will he explain to the House what he meant by that?

The Prime Minister: On the first question, the hon. Member, who, I think, has had some contact with Rhodesia himself in the last year, will agree that it would not be possible for a Royal Commission to do this task against the present background in Rhodesia, where there is no freedom of political

expression. I do not think that the Royal Commission would get any more balanced a picture of Rhodesia than the hon. Member has if it tried to operate in those conditions.
I feel also that it is not much that we have had to ask the regime in Rhodesia—not to give up anything of value, not to give up independence, because it has no independence, but to give up a titular independence which they and they alone believe in. It is a delusion from which they suffer. That was all that we asked. For that, they could have had immediate constitutional power in Rhodesia. They could have had the chance of proceeding to independence on terms never previously granted.
They could have had the chance of a peaceful, democratic Rhodesia. They would have had guarantees against premature African rule. They would have had the chance of an economically prosperous Rhodesia. They have thrown all that away because they refused to end what does neither them nor anybody else any good—this illegal claim to independence.
On the question of military force, I said that if Mr. Smith accepted our terms and then turned back to a second U.D.I., in those circumstances our pledge not to use force to get a constitutional settlement would be ended.

Mr. John Lee: Will my right hon. Friend accept that some of us on this side, hearing how near the Commonwealth came to breaking up, feel a sense of relief at what has happened? If sanctions do not succeed, is my right hon. Friend now prepared to use military force in backing them? Secondly, may we be assured that we will never again have any more negotiations with this man Smith? Thirdly, may we ask that although, up till now, my hon. Friend has refrained from considering direct rule from Whitehall as a possibility, he will now reconsider this in view of the latest break?

The Prime Minister: I said that the danger to the Commonwealth arose from my demand that I should have one last chance with Mr. Smith; but once it was conceded, after a very difficult conference, that the Commonwealth was committed, as I was, to allow this to


happen, I do not see that the Commonwealth was in danger if that particular thing had succeeded.
I think that some of the other points raised by my hon. Friend are a bit unreal. We are now in a very difficult situation as a result of this refusal today, and it would not help if I were to go further in saying what we will and will not do.

Sir Lionel Heald: Although this is an Adjournment debate, I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, and will ask a question in the hope that I may have an answer and not a ninth speech. Is the Prime Minister aware——

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment lapsed without Question put.

Sir L. Heald: Sir L. Heald rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman has lost his opportunity. Sir John Hobson.

Sir L. Heald: On a point of order. I began my speech on the Adjournment debate, having been called by you, Mr. Speaker. Am I now told to sit down?

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Noise does not help. I am sorry to appear discourteous to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He had just the opportunity to put his question. Unfortunately, when we reach ten o'clock the Adjournment Motion is talked out automatically. I am ever so sorry.

PAY INCREASES (RESTRICTIONS)

10.1 p.m.

Sir John Hobson (Warwick and Learnington): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty——

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Noise does not help on a serious night like tonight.

Sir J. Hobson: I beg to move,
That an humble Address——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will wait for a moment while other hon. Members leave the Chamber.

Sir J. Hobson: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Temporary Restrictions on Pay Increases (20th July 1966 Levels) (No. 1) Order 1966 (S.I. 1966, No. 1365), dated 1st November 1966, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st November, be annulled.
I had been endeavouring to fill in the noisy interval by reading slowly the formal part of the Motion, Mr. Speaker.
This debate may well be somewhat of an anti-climax after the important and dramatic events which has just taken place, but it is, nevertheless, a topic of considerable importance for the internal and economic organisation of our affairs. This is the very first Prayer against an Order affecting wages made by the Secretary of State under Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act.
The Order vividly illustrates the pettiness and absurdity of the system which the Government have devised for the control of wages. Everyone in this country is under the impression that we now have a system under which all prices and all wages are controlled by law. Any hon. Member has only to look at his postbag to see that the general idea of most citizens is that Parliament and the Government have provided for a system under which everybody's wages and everybody's prices are subject to the rule of law. Even law societies and law students are under this general impression, and when one addresses them and tells them that it is not so, they look at one with amazement.
The view is absurdly wrong, because there are almost no wages at all which are at present limited by law other than those of the 120 supervisors of Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd., whose case we are discussing this evening, those who are employed in the newspaper industry, in printing and distribution, both in London and the provinces, and, I believe, about 200 or more hot blast furnacemen, in respect of whom an Order has been made.
This is, of course, a minute proportion of the total working population of 23 million people. One might ask why have these three groups only so far been been picked out. Are they the only ones to be subject to a direction in law that their wages are not to be increased, or at least are to be restrained to the level at which they were on 20th July? The answer is because they attracted public notice. It was their intention to break the freeze that attracted the attention of the Minister, and that alone is the reason why they have been singled out for control by law and why 99·99 per cent. of their colleagues are not subject to any such control.
Naturally, in the case of Thorn Electrical Industries, it was the publicity attracted to the county court action in September of this year which brought down this Order upon a freely negotiated contract which had been made—before the announcement of additional measures—on 12th July, the very day after some inspired guidance which led the Financial Times to say that no further measures of restraint of any sort were needed. One may suspect that if that litigation had not ensued—if they had kept very quiet indeed—we should not have heard very much more about the supervisors at Thorn's.
Is it not a corrollary of this method of government that if both employer and employee keep quiet and say very little—if they are not members of a large organisation, and do not get involved in much publicity, or are not members of the newspapers, whose private affairs are printed on the front of them—the chances of an Order being made, such as this one, will be very small indeed?
What machinery is there for finding out what increases ought to be controlled and will take place, large and small? I know that Part II of the Act may very


well draw the attention of the Minister to some proposed increases, but what proportion of the 23 million employed people in this country are subject to any direct attention under Part II which would attract to the notice of the Minister information that an increase was contemplated, because it would seem that, for anybody to whom Part II has not been applied, there is not, so far as I can see, any machinery that would draw to the attention of the responsible Minister the fact that an increase was proposed; that is, unless there happens to be some publicity about it or unless, by accident in some other way, it is drawn to his attention.
There is another question about this system of detailed control by separate and individual orders. How small a number does the Secretary of State intend to deal with in these particular and specialised orders? As I said, in this case we are dealing with about 120 people, 120 members of A.S.S.E.T. and a few members of the other union concerned. Is the Minister prepared to make Orders in respect of one or two individuals? For example, what about the gravedigger at Stow-on-the-Wold, if it is proposed to give him an increase in his wages? Does he get away with it because he is not a member of a large union or organisation, whereas those who are members of very large trade unions, whose affairs are bound to be the subject of pubicity, come to the notice of the Minister?
Unless the application of this power is to be universal and is to bite not only on large blocks of men but on quite small caucuses of employees, its application is bound to be unfair and will be seen increasingly to be unfair by those who, because of the accidental way in which these matters are brought to the Minister's notice, have the right hon. Gentleman's powers exercised against them.
There is another question, about the persons concerned at Thorn's Electrical Industries. I understand—I may be wrong, but the information I have obtained is—that this is not wholly a union shop. Are there any non-unionists employed at Thorn Electrical Industries who are in a position similar to that of those who are members of one or the other of the two unions mentioned in the Schedule to the Order who will be

free of this Order, whereas those who are members of the union will not?
I know, of course, that the Schedule to the Order provides that if the agreement between the employers and the unions of 12th July is expressly or by implication incorporated into the contract of employment of any individual he is controlled, but does the Minister know, and can he tell us, whether it is the fact that all people in a supervisory position at Thorn Electrical Industries have such terms in their contracts? Particularly, is it not the position if any new person is taken into employment in that grade he will be enirely free of control if the employers are willing to make with him a new agreement which expressly excludes the agreement of 12th July?
Is that not a very absurd position? When one makes an Order in a form which does not attract particularly the people at a particular type of work but—I am devoting this argument to the form of the Order—which is directed only at such persons as have a particular form of term of employment, is it not then possible for any new employees to be entirely free of the Order simply by the form in which their new contract of employment is drawn?
I think that I ought to say something to the House about the history of this matter. From October, 1965, manual workers at Thorn's got two sets of increases which they had the benefit of drawing immediately and which they are still drawing today, which is still being paid and is subject to no control. Administrative grades did not reach agreement quite so quickly, but it was agreed, long before 20th July—and, as I have said, before the new intention of the Government to introduce extreme measures and the actual measures were announced.
It was agreed on 12th July between Thorn Electrical Industries and A.S.S.E.T., representing, I think, the supervisory staff, that there should be a rise from 4th April in the wages of such persons from £20 to £21, an extra £1 a week, and I understand that there was no term at all in that agreement postponing the date of payment of either the extra sum due or the sums due retrospectively. Therefore, as I understand the position, they did become payable from the making of the agreement: £1


a week from 4th April to 12th April; and from 12th July to the next pay day, an increase of £1 became due.
As we know there was in mid-August a test case in the county court by one supervisor to recover £1 a week for 21 weeks, and in September there was judgment for him for £21, which he has been paid. I understand that now the Order has been made Thorn Electrical Industries have paid to all their 119 other supervisors £1 a week for the period from 4th April to 2nd November. So they have had their increase for all that period. Now the impact of this Order will be to put back the level of wages to what it was on 20th July of this year.
Can the Minister confirm whether or not it is the position that a further action is now pending in the county court claiming that the material level for the purposes of the Act and the Order at 20th July is the amount lawfully due on that date, and not the amount actually paid? Is it right that that action is due for hearing on 18th January next? Will not the Secretary of State look rather foolish if the contention of the union, of A.S.S.E.T., in those proceedings turns out to be right? Because was not the Secretary of State notified, before making this Order, of this very point that the union intended to take?
Therefore, in making this Order, is he not supporting the view that if an employer, on 20th July, was neglecting to pay the full wages due to his employees, or was withholding an increase in breach of contract, that neglect or default by the employer extends the powers of the Secretary of State to reduce the wages still further than he otherwise could have done, to a lower level than if the employer had not been in breach of his contract or failed in fulfilling his duties? Is it not disgraceful of the Government to rely on neglect and breach of contract by an employer to extend their powers to depress wages?
This is what they are doing by making this Order on the basis that that is exactly what they can do. If they cannot do that, there is no point in making the Order. The whole basis of this Order must be that all that the employee can now get is the level of £20, which is less than he was entitled to under the contract as existed at that time. Is it

not an extraordinary attitude for the Government to adopt, that they should make an Order which depends for its validity upon a breach of contract and failure to pay full wages by an employer to the people in his employment?
There is another question that I would like to ask about the Order. Would the Minister explain the effect of this Order upon the contract of employment and the legal right to recover remuneration by each supervisor who is affected by it? This point was raised in the debate of 25th October by my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. lain Macleod) and was never answered. There seem to be two perfectly possible views of the impact of this Order on individual contracts of employment. First, the payment of the agreed wage of £21 becomes illegal and is, therefore, unenforceable in law, because the Order operates to prevent the payment of the agreed figure of £21. It becomes an illegal payment. Neither the Order nor the Act nor any contract gives any right of any other remuneration for each supervisor.
Therefore, each supervisor affected by this Order is unable to sue in a court of law for an agreed amount of his wage, namely £21, and nobody has provided—neither do the Act on the Order provide—for him to recover any other sum of money as his wages. Perhaps he will get it. Nevertheless, there may be occasions of dispute, and there may be occasions when he might want to have a legal right of action to recover his wages. That is a rather serious thing for the Government to have removed—the right of a man to recover an agreed sum of wages. He would be left with no other right than to sue upon what is known as a quantum meruit, which is to recover wages for the work that he has done as the court may think reasonable. The court might think that £20 is quite unreasonable for the work which some employees had done. It is a serious matter to leave employees with no other claim than to sue upon a quantum meruit.
The alternative view—and I think this is the correct one—is that the Order post-pones the payment of the increase only during the period when the Order is in force but will not prevent each supervisor from suing for the £1 increase after the Order has ceased to operate. In other


words, if this Order ceases on the expiration of the Measure, say on 12th August next, each supervisor will be entitled to get his £21 a week—the agreed extra figure—as from that day forward and he can also claim £40 in respect of the £1 a week which he has been kept from getting between 2nd November, 1966 and 12th August, 1967.

Mr. Julius Silverman: That is provided that the employer has not served a notice under Section 30. If he has, it would seem that he can escape liability, but if he refuses to serve a notice under Section 30 I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right in saying that the effect of that Section will be null and void.

Sir J. Hobson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That may arise on another Order, but Section 30 does not apply to that contract because that section deals only with a contract of employment made
before the date of the coming into force of this Part of this Act"—
that is, before 6th October, and therefore that contract qualifies—
under which any person who has worked for the employer since before that date is to receive remuneration for the same kind of work for any period after that date which is at a higher rate …
I should have thought that that was limited to contracts which began to operate before, but provided for increases after 6th October. I always read that as applying to contracts made before 6th October to operate after 6th October. There may be other cases where that argument of the right hon. Gentleman would be valid, but the Thorn Electrical Industries contract was made on 12th July to operate on 12th July.
I do not know whether Thorn's want to deprive people of that increase, but if I am right in thinking that Section 30 does not apply to the Thorn case, the supervisors will get their £21 a week on 12th August next year and will have a pent-up accumulated claim for the increase of which they have been deprived, namely £40, and Thorn's will have to put that aside. There will be a quite substantial accumulation in this case, and every time the Minister makes an Order of that sort in the future he will not be taking out

purchasing power, but only pinning back purchasing power to the time the Order expires.
Suddenly, the pent-up accumulated increases which employees might otherwise have had will all be released together in a flood upon the economy, at a time when it may very well not be convenient for the Government to release that additional purchasing power. If, as we hope, they do not make many of these Orders, the problem will not arise. However, if they have increasingly to make them, pinning back people's increases, and if my view of the law is correct, they will be merely postponing an excessive release of purchasing power into the economy.
I do not think that my view or the Minister's view will matter, but it will be interesting for the Government to tell us which interpretation they think is right. The courts will decide, and I do not suppose that any employer would be very safe not to put money aside for increases which are affected by the Order unless he is absolutely certain that there is no possibility of a claim on this basis. Whichever way one looks at it this either deprives employees of their right to sue for remuneration other than on a quantum meruit basis, or payment of the increases is simply postponed to the expiration of the Order. It may be less convenient to release the accumulation then than to let it out weekly over the intervening period. Either of those views produces a thoroughly unsatisfactory result.
We therefore think that the Order is based on the unsound principle that the Government can control in detail individual wage negotiations between employers, whether big or small, and employees, and that everybody should be subject to the risk of being discovered in an unsatisfactory increase in wages and that the Minister may make an individual Order in respect of them, whereas large numbers of other people may take an increase and the Government may never hear about it. There is no control, and what they do is lawful. Either, if there is control, it should be done generally or we should allow the pressure of the economy, as no doubt it is doing and will do, to keep down the general demand in the economy.
This is a thoroughly bad Order in examining the use of this power, because


it proceeds on the entirely false premise that the Minister can rely on the breach of contract or neglect of the employer to pay an amount of wages at a particular date. It is thoroughly unsatisfactory that an Order should be made on the basis that, although the men were entitled as of 20th July to one figure, just because, by accident, it had not been put into operation and had not begun to be payable, the Minister will use his powers to press them back to the figure which they should have had on 20th July.
I shall ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to do all that they can to ensure that this Prayer is passed by the House.

10.26 p.m.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: After listening to the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir John Hobson), I am beginning to understand why lawyers are so suspect in this Chamber. Surely the words in Section 29(4), to which he has drawn attention, are clear. If he is arguing for his latter assumption, namely, that the increase is deferred by the Order until the Order expires, and that on the expiry all the accumulated credit would have to be paid by the employer, surely the word "for" in the second line of the subsection, should "during".
The implication of the word "for" must be that the increase is not payable in respect of work done during the period while the Order is in force. I should have thought that the words of the subsection were perfectly plain. We must wait to see whether the county court judges take my view. I should have thought that this was a case in which common sense would prevail.

Sir J. Hobson: County court judges will decide the right level at which the wages should be fixed. When the Order expires there will be the different and separate question which I have raised as to what is the effect of creating illegality in the performance of the contract. The county court judge will not decide that question.

Mr. Lyon: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct in saying that the county court judge will not have to decide that question in the pending case to which he referred, but if the decision is to be made it must be made by some tribunal, and presumably it would be made by a county court.
I turn to the wider question. The Order indicates in an enlightening way the kind of control which is being exercised by the Government under Part IV of the Act. The right hon. and learned Gentleman rightly said that the Orders which have been made under Part IV affect only a very small minority of the working community. They are only the sensitive portions of the community in the sense that these are the areas in which people have decided to be completely irresponsible, although 99 pr cent. of the community have decided that in the national interest they should be responsible and accept the lead given by the Government.
In other words, this is not the kind of statutory compulsion in respect of wages, or, indeed, of prices, which would justify any suggestion that these are draconion measures by the Government. This is an overall control, it is true, but it is an overall control which is limited to dealing only with the mavericks in industry.
I come back, in relation to this Order, to a point which I made in the economic debate last week, that it is this kind of Order which gives the outer limits for negotiations in respect of wages, and similar Orders in respect of prices, for industry during this period of freeze. The same kind of Order will be applied during the period of standstill, and all that is being done is to set the limits. If the limits have been set, after the period of standstill there could be a situation in which there could be free negotiation within those limits.
I therefore welcome this Order, because it is to me the kind of control which is required in all our future negotiations about wages, and, indeed, about prices. I would only suggest that in so far as this kind of control has been successful during the period of the wage freeze it could be equally successful in the period after the period of standstill, of severe restraint, has expired. It might be that the Government should look again at the whole question of whether there ought not to be a continuance of permanent statutory control.

Mr. John Biffen: I rise only to inquire whether the hon. Gentleman made a slip of the tongue. He said, "after the freeze period" and then "during the period of standstill". Was


he thinking, in saying "after the freeze", of the period of severe restraint?

Mr. Lyon: Yes. The point to which I was directing my attention was after the expiry of Part IV of the Act, which would be after the period of severe restraint. It was a slip of the tongue.
As the right hon. and learned Gentleman has pointed out, this restraint which has been used under the powers conferred on the Government by Part IV has had to be used only in relation to a very limited area of the working population. Nevertheless, the figures show that it has been eminently successful. I suggest that in so far as it has been successful now in a period of freeze, it could be equally successful after the expiry of the Act.

Mr. Julius Silverman: Does my hon. Friend suggest, that apart from the cases affected by the Order, there have been no increases in wages or salaries?

Mr. Lyon: The facts speak for themselves. If one takes the figures which have been given for the increases in wage rates—I grant that the figures for earnings may be different when one has the full facts—and in so far as one has any figures to compare, the increase has been very limited indeed during the period of wage freeze.
I accept that during the period of severe restraint the problems will be very much more acute, and that if one were to continue thereafter with some kind of statutory control the problems would become even greater as the years went on. But I think that the country is prepared to accept that some kind of permanent overall statutory control which does not impinge on detailed wage negotiations, or, indeed, price negotiations—something that provides an umbrella beyond which the negotiations cannot go—is required in this area.
I therefore welcome the Order, and only hope that the Government will think again about the continuance of this power.

10.35 p.m.

Mr. John Biffen: It is encouraging to know that we are to have the modulated, careful Fabian, barrister, middle-class thinking of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) when-

ever we discuss workers' wages, and that we shall have a continuing elaboration of the thesis which he adumbrated in the recent economic debate—that we need pervasive and continuing control. All that will be noted.
The hon. Gentleman's argument is that this was an act of enlightenment, to which I respond, "If this be enlightenment, send for more candles." His claim that the figures show that it has been eminently successful must be a triumph of hope over evidence. Certainly it discounts, purposely, I suspect, the effects of the squeeze.
Is the hon. Gentleman telling all those who now complain about the economic conditions which flow from the squeeze, that the stand-still in earnings, the inability to get more overtime and the inability to secure higher rates are not due to the squeeze, it is a highly successful wage planning machinery—the first real tangible evidence of which is in the Statutory Instrument which we are discussing?

Mr. Nicholas Ridley: If what the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) says is true, there would be no need for a squeeze at all. Why do we have the squeeze?

Mr. Biffen: I would follow that point, but for the fact that I might run into difficulties of order.
None the less, I would make this one further observation on the hon. Gentleman's remarks. He talked about wages and prices. That is more than a Freudian slip. It omits the question of salaries. It is precisely the insubstantial quality of information available to the Ministries when making their Statutory Instruments—that lack of knowledge affecting salaries—which makes it so important that, every time the incomes of employees are discussed, we discuss them in terms of wages and salaries and demand parity of treatment and parity of information.
My objection to the Statutory Instrument arises largely from the description contained in the Schedule, where it says that it is to affect remuneration for work
… by or on behalf of Thorn Electrical Industries Limited, the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians…


The cardinal feature of the Order is that it affects the earnings of those employees who are organised into a trade union. That is what distinguishes it particularly, because no one doubts that there must be many other incomes increases taking place which are not the result of any union presence, about which the Government know nothing or are pleased to know nothing.
Indeed, the Government have indicated in their latest White Paper on severe restraint that there are fairly wide areas where they are rather anxious to know nothing. Paragraph 38 of the White Paper says that where increases affect employees numbering less than 200, there is no moral requirement upon the employer to notify the Government; though I agree that it goes on to say "unless" and so forth.
Therefore, under that very term, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) mentioned, the 120 employees would not be covered by the moral requirements of paragraph 38 of the latest White Paper of the Government's economic policy. The fact is that this is a piece of selective wage restraint, or selective income restraint, which is designed particularly against the activities of the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians because of the well-known and widely-publicised fact that the general secretary of that union is determined that the Government's incomes policy shall rest on law and not on blandishments.
This is the reason why the Thorn workers have been selected. It cannot be because of their importance or their significance to the community. It cannot be because they established, as it were, some parameters, in the words of the hon. Member for York, in which the rest of the employers may take note. It is because it would have been extremely difficult for the Government to have turned aside from a direct challenge which was presented to them by Mr. Clive Jenkins.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: It is true that this was a test case of the responsibility of a large section of the community. No one can believe that, even with all the statutory power that is available, if the overwhelming mass of workers had rejected the wage freeze, and had decided

as Mr. Clive Jenkins apparently decided, to oppose the Government, they would not have been successful in wrecking the wage freeze. Whatever the hon. Gentleman says about the figures, the only figures which we have show that so far, at any rate, it has been eminently successful.

Mr. Biffen: There is no question whatsoever but that under the existing conditions of credit squeeze any substantial or even significant rise in rates would be wholly unexpected. The evidence is there to be quoted, in the previous experience after the 1958 measures, and after the 1961 measures. It is broadly similar to the pattern that we see today.
When the hon. Gentleman talks about responsibility, the challenge of responsibility was of one man who said, "We shall accept the rule of law, and not the rule of White Paper". If this is something which the hon. Gentleman, in his good-natured barrister fashion, dismisses as an irresponsible action on the part of Mr. Clive Jenkins, then he can keep, cherish, and exhort that view of trade union activities, and that view of the rule of law, as characteristic of the thinking of the new Labour élite, and I am glad that it will be kept on that side of the House.
It seems to me that one lesson which one learns from this is that if an employer is confronted with employees who wish to have rises in earnings or rates, either at this time or in the future, and the alternative to not paying those rates is that he will lose the services of those employees, not perhaps just to another British employer, but to a North American employer—and this is a real issue when discussing the services of many of the members of A.S.S.E.T.—the thing to do is to keep as quiet as possible about it.
After all, silence might even be encouraged by the Government. I remember that when we discussed the Prices and Incomes Bill, which has given rise to this Order, there was much talk about the productivity agreement of British Oxygen. Suddenly, silence has descended on that difficulty for the prices and incomes policy. I suspect that this is because, under a cloak of good natured and general looking on the other side of the street, the productivity agreement is going ahead. I hope so. This is


what I have assumed. I have not sought to make any noises about it which might cause embarrassment to either British Oxygen or the Government.
On the basis of this Order, I am certain that the lesson which we shall learn from it, which the House will learn from it, which employers will learn from it, and which the workers will learn from it, is that the less the Government know about the movement of earnings the better, unless we are to have a continuation of this kind of arbitrary and curiously selective legislation.
This is the first opportunity we have had to discuss in the House the effect upon incomes of the Prices and Incomes Act, and I am happy to have the opportunity of registering my vote in opposition to it.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Bob Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West): I rise to support the Government on taking the action proposed in respect of Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary—then the First Secretary—speaking in the proceedings in Committee on the Prices and Incomes Bill, at 8 o'clock in the morning on 4th August, said, in moving new Clause 5:
This is a substantial power, but these powers, as I have said all the way through, will be used only if the period of standstill has broken down on a voluntary basis. It would be a complete nonsense to say that the standstill should be observed but then to have no power if, in fact, there are substantial breaches. We think it proper to take this power, but only if the voluntary system has broken down and only if we invoke Part IV of the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. Standing Committee B,  4th August, 1966, cc. 711–2.]
I submit that the great majority of our workers—organised or otherwise—have accepted the need for the wage freeze. They have respected the decisions taken by the Government.
The reserve powers having been debated at length in the Committee and on the Floor of the House it would be quite wrong for the Government to allow any selfish minority to undermine the efforts of the great mass of workers who have willingly accepted the need to put the national well-being before personal profit. The fact that these reserve powers have been used on only two occasions underlines my point about the

loyalty of our workers to the Government in the national interest. The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) said that in this case 120 people might seek back payment for 10 months, and then we should have this flood of people, with disastrous effects on our economy, in August, when all 120 of them, with their 10 months' back pay, would create a balance of payments crisis. That is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to suggest.
At Thorn Electrical Industries we have an organisation which, through its general secretary, has declared war on this legislation from the word "off". In fact, long before the legislation ever reached the stage of being debated in Committee the individual concerned had declared war on the legislation and on the Government. It may be that the leaders of this organisation are concerned purely and simply with their own membership, or, I suggest, not with their own membership but only with a very small percentage of it.

Mr. Biffen: Will the hon. Member none the less confirm that at no point in his opposition to the Government has Mr. Clive Jenkins or his union broken the law? He has talked about Mr. Jenkins' making war on the legislation, but will he confirm that the law has not been broken?

Mr. Brown: I am not suggesting now, nor have I ever suggested, that Clive Jenkins, or A.S.S.E.T. as an organisation, has broken the law. But they have most certainly challenged the law. From the "off" they have said that they will not accept this legislation. This was long before they knew what form it would take. Clive Jenkins made that perfectly clear.
I submit that it would be almost immoral for the Government to pull the carpet from under the feet of the many very responsible trade union leaders who have accepted this legislation on behalf of their members—the very many responsible trade unionists and trade union leaders who see, in giving support to the measures taken in the national interest, a clear policy of supporting their own membership in total.
This, in itself, is a most important reason for supporting the Government on this issue at this time, for let no hon.


Member forget that the goodwill of organised labour is a most important need for any Government, of whatever political colour they may be.

10.51 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: When Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act was introduced, it was clear that the Government had in mind a game of bluff with the trade unionists, and I suppose that when they introduced it there was a reasonable prospect of their getting away with that bluff. In fact, the bluff was called. When it was called, the Government got into a panic. As a result, we now have legislation that is absolutely discriminatory.
I took the view of the Prices and Incomes Bill from the very beginning that as long as the Government kept to a voluntary policy, with a certain amount of power given to the members of the Prices and Incomes Board to secure from unions and employers advance notice of possible wage claims, it will be all right, but that once they got into the sphere of compulsion they would get into trouble. The Government are in trouble and difficulty because of the foghorn voice of Mr. Clive Jenkins, who said from the start that he would have nothing to do with this policy.
If the Government had not brought in Part IV, it is more than likely that instead of the Minister and themselves being in trouble Mr. Clive Jenkins would have been in trouble. He has been able to carry his members very easily with him against Part IV—compulsion—and this kind of Order but he would have been in a rather difficult position if he had had to say to his members, "Everyone else is supporting the Government voluntarily, but I want you to go against the Government. I want you, in complete isolation in the country, to refuse to support the voluntary effort that is being made by everyone else on the wages and salaries front."
The matter was not allowed to take its normal course. The Government brought in the Order before allowing Mr. Clive Jenkins to get into conflict with his members, as he might well have done——

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that if Mr. Clive Jenkins had given a responsible lead with

other trade union leaders it would have been necessary to have had this Order?

Mr. Lewis: It is within the bounds of possibility that Mr. Clive Jenkins would not have received support from his members in going against the Government's voluntary appeal.
The hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) has just said that this was a test case for the Government, but the basis of any test case is that once the case is proved it is used to influence things right across the board and down the line. That is what the Government are not doing. For them it is a test case, but they are then saying to every employer with fewer than 200 employees, "You do not need to do this. You can increase wages and salaries—we do not want to look at you." It is a case of blinking the eye, so that a very large section of the employed population can get increases without the Prices and Incomes Board knowing anything about it.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: If what the hon. Member says is true, it would be reflected in the statistics, but it is not; and if it is not reflected in the statistics, the hon. Member has no evidence for saying what he has just said.

Mr. Lewis: In the first place, we have not had time yet to get statistics. We do not know. Secondly, across this front total statistics are not available—on salaries, for instance, as my hon. Friend has pointed out on numerous occasions. A case was brought to my notice in my constituency the other week, when I was asked whether it was possible to increase a groundsman's salary——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): Order. I cannot see what this has to do with the Order.

Mr. Lewis: I am dealing, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with an increase. It may not be in connection with the Order, but it is parallel to it.

Mr. Bob Brown: The hon. Member must surely accept that when we have a quarter of a million local government officers and 72,000 British Rail staff in the same position as these 120 supervisors, it would be morally wrong to allow these 120 to get away with it when these others are observing the conditions.

Mr. Lewis: I do not suggest that it is right that they should be allowed to get away with it.
The Thorn Company took a view on this. It had a contract. It decided to put the onus entirely on the Government. It was forced into this position by Mr. Clive Jenkins. The Thorn Company was entirely right. I believe that the Government could have got a situation of wage and salary control and a limit of increases under the voluntary system without bringing in Part IV and that by bringing in Part IV they destroyed much of the voluntary effort for which they had asked and which previously they were getting.
The worst feature about the Order is the possibilities that it creates for the future. It is extraordinary what enthusiasm there is now by hon. Members opposite, including the hon. Member for York and others, including, indeed, the Chairman of the Prices and Incomes Board, for keeping this control permanently.
A number of us on this side made it clear that we believed that a prices and incomes policy was desirable on a voluntary basis and that the Board should have certain responsibilities and be encouraged to influence. We draw the line on the downward slope towards permanent compulsion. The trade unions as a whole will, I believe, very soon come to the view that their support of the Labour Party will be less enthusiastic in the future if this is the road on which hon. Members opposite are going.
If the Labour Party and the Government decide, following the next 12 months, to have some form of compulsion permanently in this way, one should ask the Minister this question. There will then be many Orders of this kind which come before the House. Is it to be compulsion that is restricted——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is travelling far beyond the scope of the Prayer. He must confine himself to the merits or demerits of the Order.

Mr. Lewis: I will return to the Order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Will we in future be in the position of having to argue many Orders of this

kind late at night? I ask the Government to be very careful where they are going. It is one thing to bring in Part IV of the Bill in an emergency situation. It is another thing to have a voluntary incomes policy, and it is quite another thing, which would be completely unacceptable to us, to have compulsion permanently imposed in this field.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Julius Silverman: I should declare my interest, as I am a member of Mr. Clive Jenkins' union, though I do not see eye to eye with Mr. Jenkins on his policy on wages, or, for that matter, on the standstill.
When Part IV of the Act was adopted by the House, I expressed my reservations upon this Order, which I cannot support tonight. One of the reasons is this. It is said by my hon. Friends that if this sort of increase were allowed it would wreck the whole of the standstill. But this is very far from being the truth, because we are dealing tonight not with all wages or all prices, but with a small section of wages where a legally enforceable agreement was entered into before 20th July and where people are able to claim what is theirs in law. We are not discussing the whole question of the standstill.
It would have been quite possible for the Government to have drawn the line on the standstill so that it applied only to agreements entered into after 20th July. In my view they have drawn the line at the wrong date by interfering with legally enforceable agreements.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Does my hon. Friend realise, when he talks about a small section of people, that this affects 6 million workers who had agreements already signed and with the amount determined before 20th July? If this section had been allowed to slip through, so would 6 million other workers.

Mr. Silverman: I do not accept that there are 6 million. I know that there have been a large number of agreements, but I am talking of contractual, legally binding obligations, effective before 20th July. There are certainly not 6 million people who could have taken their case to court. This is a very small section indeed.
How can it make sense. Supposing that Thorn Electrics had paid this


increase one or two days after their agreement. They would not then have come under Part IV. How can an Order such as this be justified when it is based on the accidental fact that this firm did not pay the increase until 20th July? If another firm had entered into a similar agreement and paid up the first week's wages before 20th July it would have escaped this Order. It does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational, and I do not see how it is justifiable.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) said that in his view it was very likely that these men could claim their wage increase when the Order expires in twelve months time. I would ask my hon. Friend this—and I put a point to the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington which I do not think he entirely followed. Suppose that a notice is given under Section 28. Then one gets Section 30, which provides a mechanism by which the employer can defeat his liability. There is no similar mechanism in the case of an Order under Section 29 which would seem to indicate that this Order really will not amount to anything anyhow because the employer could not give notice under Section 30 to dispose of his liability. If the employer cannot dispose of his liability, his liability must be met when the Order expires, so what is the point of this Order anyway?
I hope that the Government will not persist in Orders of this character. I do not think that they do any credit to the wage freeze or to the standstill when they are interfering with legal obligations which have been entered into, but which, by sheer accident, have not yet been executed. I believe that the White Paper dealing with the period of severe restraint provides that contracts such as these—where a contract was completed before 20th July—should be released during the period of severe restraint. How does that apply to these members of A.S.S.E.T. and the clerical workers under this Order?
How can my hon. Friend justify, under this Order, the discrimination between trade unionists and non-trade unionists? That is one of the least justifiable features of the Order. Is this an action taken against one union with whom the Government ate in conflict and who have had the impertinence to question the Govern-

ment's legislation in a court of law? If that is so, this is not very commendable behaviour. I should like the Minister's answers to all those questions.

11.2 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. William Rodgers): Tonight, we are not discussing the broad question of the prices and incomes policy or the Prices and Incomes Act which received Royal Assent in August, or for that matter Part IV, which we discussed on 25th October. We are discussing the narrow point whether the Government were right to make a Section 29 Order in the case of Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd. at the beginning of November.
I greatly respect the legal expertise of the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), and in so far as I am unable to give him a wholly satisfactory reply to any of his questions, I hope that he will not assume that I have not taken note of them, and that they will not receive the closest consideration. If it is his wish, I shall be happy in correspondence to deal with any points which I do not cover satisfactorily tonight.
Having said that, there were times when listening to him I felt that his ingenious legal arguments were somewhat remote from the realities of making a prices and incomes policy work. I was glad to hear the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown), who brought a sense of proportion to a discussion which sometimes had been removed from the need, having decided upon a policy, to see that it is satisfactorily carried out.
One of the points of substance argued at the beginning, and returned to, among others, by the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen), was the suggestion that there had been a conspiracy of silence between employers and employees about breaches of the standstill. I have a rather higher opinion of the parties involved than has the right hon. and learned Gentleman or others who have suggested that breaches have occurred. There is every reason for believing that the great majority of those who were covered by the White Paper, and in particular those who already had commitments, have respected the standstill, and certainly we have no evidence to suggest the contrary.
It is true that we are considering, as we must, any other breaches that have been brought to our attention, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) that we do not want to have to use Part IV and Section 29 if we can avoid doing so. The remedy lies not in our hands but in the hands of those who, if they wish to do so, as the majority do, will respect the standstill rather than provoke us into what we believe to be necessary action in defence, not simply of those others who have respected the standstill, but of all those who will benefit from the success of the prices and incomes policy. Public opinion shows that the overwhelming majority of people endorse the measures which we took last July in regard to the standstill and the period of severe restraint.
I will repeat, for the benefit of hon. Members who may not know the exact sequence of events, how this matter first arose. The account of the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington was substantially accurate, but perhaps I should fill it out a little. On 12th April last A.S.S.E.T., the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians and the other union, the National Association of Clerical and Supervisory Staffs, N.A.C.S.S., opened negotiations with Thorn Electrical Industries Limited for an agreement for an increase in pay for certain of their members—I will return to this later—about 120 in all, employed in a supervisory capacity by Thorns.
The position at the time was that the supervisors concerned were on a basic rate of £20 a week and the claim, for a 5 per cent. increase, represented an additional £1. With overtime, most of them would have had total weekly earnings, before deductions, of between £23 and £24. These negotiations were concluded on 12th July, and the position then was that Thorns had agreed to pay certain members of A.S.S.E.T. and N.A.C.S.S. an increase of 5 per cent. as from 4th April of this year, and a further increase of 5 per cent. as from 3rd April, 1967.
That was the position at 12th July and, for that reason, the position at 20th July, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced the pay standstill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston, suggested that it was illogical because only some people were caught. He implied that there was an anomaly in the standstill, as it was applied after 20th July, in that they were caught only because the money had not been passed over whereas if it had been paid they would not have been. I am not saying tonight that there were not some anomalies or even some injustices in the introduction of the standstill. Let us be frank and admit that it was inevitable that there would be some. But we could not have made the standstill work unless we had determined a date and had been quite rigid about it. Having formulated the rules, we had to apply them honestly and fairly to all the groups affected by them.
The next stage in the sequence of events was on 18th August, when the solicitors for A.S.S.E.T. gave notice to the solicitors for Thorns that one of its members proposed to bring an action to secure payment of the 5 per cent. increase which had been agreed on 12th July. On 26th August, the solicitor for Mr. L. A. Allen, the member in question, served a county court summons on Thorns for payment of the increase as from 4th April. Then, when the case came up in the Edmonton County Court on 29th September, Judge Granville Smith found for Mr. Allen. The firm consulted with its solicitors and, after consideration, decided not to appeal.
The formal notice of the proposal to make the Order under Section 29 was given to the parties on 14th October. I think, in view of previous discussions in the House about consultation, including the one last Monday, it would be right if very quickly I referred to the consultation which took place. On 12th October the C.B.I. consulted the D.E.A. about the proposal to make an Order against Thorn's employees. They accepted, after discussion, that it was important to make clear that the workers concerned should be no better off at the end of the day as a result of the court action than other workers who were observing the standstill.
The T.U.C. was also consulted in the same week, and the T.U.C.'s attitude was similar to that of the C.B.I., and I think that this bears on what was said by my


hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West. They did not want a particular group to get away with it at a time when the great majority of people were in fact respecting the standstill, although they had outstanding commitments at 20th July. At the beginning of the previous week the First Secretary consulted both the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. about the need to bring in Part IV of the Act in the light of Edmonton County Court's decision. The Order in Council was made on 5th October, to come into effect the following day. That is the course of events up to the beginning of October.
In view of the consultations which we have had with the C.B.I. and the T.U.C., at the end of the day, although the decision was, rightly, the Government's, we decided to serve formal notice on 14th October to the parties concerned of our proposal to make an Order, allowing, as the Act requires, an opportunity for representations. We received representations, which were most carefully considered by my right hon. Friend the First Secretary, but he took the view that there were no new facts, no new arguments, in the representations which would justify him in failing to make the Order. The Order was made, and came into force on 2nd November.
One of the arguments which we have heard both within the Chamber and outside is that in making this Order, which had the effect of neutralising the effect of the judgment of the county court, the Government were in some way showing disrespect for the processes of the law, but I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself answered this point in dealing with what has happened since the county court decision.
The county court found in favour of Mr. Allen on the facts of the case and in accordance with his contractual rights. At that time, Part IV was not in force, although it had been passed into law. Parliament had given the Government power to override existing contracts by further action if payments threatened to undermine the voluntary standstill.
The Order made against Thorn's did not set aside the county court decision. The sum of £21 which the court awarded to Mr. Allen has in fact been paid. The object of the Order made on 1st November is to ensure that Mr. Allen

and his colleagues as a result of their successful court action are no better off than the great majority of the workers who are voluntarily observing the standstill.
There is a further argument which I think I should touch upon, and that is that remuneration means the rate of pay to which the employee is legally entitled rather than money which he actually received. I do not think, however, that this argument has been pursued much tonight, and I hope that it has now been accepted that remuneration means money actually paid and not simply money due.

Sir J. Hobson: I hope the hon. Gentleman will not misunderstand me. I did not pursue it because it is sub judice; but it does not matter what we say here. Certainly I should not like it to be thought that I accepted that there was not a great deal to be put forward in court.

Mr. Rodgers: I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has made his view plain, but I think I ought to say quite clearly that, having considered all the facts available to us, in the opinion of the Government remuneration does mean money which has passed and not money which is due. Of course, it is right to add that any difference of legal opinion—and there can be difference of legal opinion on this question—is one which, in the last resort, only the courts can decide.

Mr. Biffen: Could the Under-Secretary tell the House whether it is the belief and the intention of the Government that should A.S.S.E.T. be successful in its appeal on the grounds that he has been talking about, the Act will give the Government further powers which would enable them to set aside the decisions of the court?

Mr. Rodgers: It would be wrong to consider a wholly hypothetical situation. We do not know what A.S.S.E.T.'s next move might be. We all hope that this may be the end of the road on this matter. It would be wrong for me to prejudge what course of events might follow.
A point which was raised, properly, on both sides of the House was the suggestion that the Act discriminates against trade unions. This is not at all the case.


Section 29 can be used to restrict the pay of any workers who have a contract of employment whether or not they belong to a trade union. In the case of Thorns, the company treated all its supervisors in the same way. It deferred the increase agreed with A.S.S.E.T. and the N.A.C.S.S. from all—and I think it would be true to say that it does not necessarily know who amongst its workers are members of the unions concerned and who are not.
The firm then paid the extra money, following the Edmonton decision, to all its employees within this category and not simply to Mr. Allen. It stopped paying the extra money in all cases with effect from 2nd November. Therefore, I think it is clear that Thorns has not discriminated, and this Order does not discriminate, against trade unionists.
Two other points have been raised on which I can touch briefly. One concerned the question of the revival of rights after the expiry of Part IV of the Act. In our view, after 12th August no rights arise again if they have been stopped by the Order. I am advised that the Order takes away the contractual rights. It does not just suspend them.

Mr. Julius Silverman: If that is so, what is the object of Section 30 of the Act? It clearly provides that an employer can get rid of his liability so far as Section 28 is concerned. The same provision would apply to Section 29. If that is so, what is the object of Section 30 at all?

Mr. Rodgers: I think my hon. Friend is wrong in saying that the relationship of Section 30 to Section 29 is the same as the relationship of Section 30 to Section 28. As I say, I am advised that the effect of this Order—that is the point that we are discussing—is such that after 12th August it will not be possible to claim the money that has not been paid during the period in which Part IV of the Act has been applicable.

Sir J. Hobson: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he has said that the effect and the view was that the workman has his contractual rights taken away. What is put in their place, and what is the situation of the workmen who have had their contractual rights taken away?

Mr. Rodgers: The right hon. and learned Gentleman draws a rather wider conclusion from what is a fairly narrow power. I made clear that in this specific case the effect of Section 29, dealing only with the settlement which was reached on 12th July last, is such that the money cannot be paid after the end of the period. I do not think that in other respects contractual rights are affected in the way which the right hon. and learned Gentleman anticipates. I agree that the point about the consequences after Part IV of the Act expires was important and powerful. It is not for me this evening to enter the interesting arguments of my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West and York about the need to continue statutory powers after 11th August. That is not the Government's view, and we very much hope that the period of standstill and severe restraint during which we have Part IV powers will be sufficient to produce an atmosphere from which we can again go forward to a policy which is wholly voluntary.
Whether or not we can do so depends on the attitude of those who want to see the policy work, and whether they are prepared to make the effort and respect the decisions once they are made. I hope that we shall not have to make many Orders. But the plain fact which hon. Members sometimes seem to have forgotten is that despite all the forebodings—I remember how many there were during the long nights when the Bill was in Committee—the voluntary standstill has been respected by the great majority of those workers for whom commitments had been entered into for increases between 20th July and the end of the year.
They have accepted the hardship and inconvenience involved and I pay tribute now, as I and my right hon. Friends have done on other occasions, to what they have done. The earnings of many of them were less than the earnings of the supervisors employed by Thorn's, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West said. If it had been a matter of staking a just claim to their increases they could have done so at least as readily and with as much cause. In a sense it would have been less anomalous in the terms of what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston said for them to have pressed


their claims than it was for the supervisor employed by Thorn's. The fact that they did not do so was an illustration of the widespread understanding of the circumstances which led the Government to declare a standstill.
Listening to the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington, and trying to follow him through the intricacy of his arguments, I felt that the Opposition remained obscure to the end in their attitude. Most of them know that a policy for productivity, prices and incomes is

essential and that in the circumstances of July it was necessary to take the powers we did in Part IV of the Act. On the other hand, they are very reluctant to admit it in public; nor are they prepared to see the Government use the remedies which are essential to ensure that the policy is faithfully carried out. They have not told the House on any previous occasion what alternative course they would recommend and they have not done so tonight.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 91, Noes 150.

Division No. 221.]
AYES
[11.29 p.m.


Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n &amp; M'd'n)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Nott, John


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Biffen, John
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Percival, Ian


Biggs-Davison, John
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Pink, R. Bonner


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Hawkins, Paul
Pounder, Rafton


Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Heseltine, Michael
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hill, J. E. B.
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Burden, F. A.
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Russell, Sir Ronald


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Holland, Philip
Sharples, Richard


Channon, H. P. G.
Hunt, John
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Sinclair, Sir George


Cooke, Robert
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Stainton, Keith


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)


Costain, A. P.
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Tapsell, Peter


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire,W.)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Thorpe, Jeremy


Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)
Longden, Gilbert
Tilney, John


Deedes, Rt Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Loveys, W. H.
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Doughty, Charles
Lubbock, Eric
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Elliott, R.W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Maude, Angus
Weatherill, Bernard


Farr, John
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Whitelaw, William


Fisher, Nigel
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Foster, Sir John
Miscampbell, Norman
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Gibson-Watt, David
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Worsley, Marcus


Glover, Sir Douglas
More, Jasper



Glyn, Sir Richard
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Grant, Anthony
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Mr. Peter Blaker and


Grant-Ferris, R.
Murton, Oscar
Mr. Reginald Eyre.


Grieve, Percy
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael





NOES


Abse, Leo
Concannon, J. D.
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Allen, Scholefield
Conlan, Bernard
Foley, Maurice


Archer, Peter
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Ford, Ben


Armstrong, Ernest
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Fowler, Gerry


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Fraser John (Norwood)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Dalyell, Tam
Freeson, Reginald


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Gardner, Tony


Binns, John
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Garrett, W. E.


Bishop, E. S.
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Garrow, Alex


Blackburn, F.
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Gordon Walker, Rt, Hn. P. C.


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Davies, Robert (Cambridge)
Gourlay, Harry


Boardman, H.
Dempsey, James
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Hannan, William


Bradley, Tom
Dobson, Ray
Haseldine, Norman


Brooks, Edwin
Doig, Peter
Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b's)
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)


Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper)
Eadie, Alex
Hooley, Frank


Brown,Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyrre,W)
English, Michael
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Ennals, David
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Buchan, Norman
Ensor, David
Howie, W.


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Faulds Andrew
Hoy, James


Carmichael, Neil
Fernyhough, E.
Hynd, John


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)


Coe, Denis
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Janner, Sir Barnett




Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Judd, Frank
Moyle, Roland
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)


Kenyon, Clifford
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Lawson, George
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Leadbitter, Ted
Norwood, Christopher
Slater, Joseph


Lestor, Miss Joan
Oakes, Gordon
Small, William


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Ogden, Eric
Spriggs, Leslie


Loughlin, Charles
O'Malley, Brian
Swingler, Stephen


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Oswald, Thomas
Taverne, Dick


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth S'tn)
Urwin, T. W.


McBride, Neil
Owen, Will (Morpeth)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


MacColl, James
Pavitt, Laurence
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Macdonald, A. H.
Pentland, Norman
Wallace, George


Mackenzie, Gregor (Ruthergien)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.
Wellbeloved, James


Mackintosh, John P.
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Maclennan, Robert
Price, William (Rugby)
Whitaker, Ben


MacPherson, Malcolm
Redhead, Edward
White, Mrs. Eirene


Manuel, Archie
Rees, Meriyn
Whitlock, William


Mapp, Charles
Richard, Ivor
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Marquand, David
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Mason, Roy
Roberta, Goronwy (Gaernarvon)
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Mellish, Robert
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Millan, Bruce
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)
Woof, Robert


Mitchell R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Rodgers, William (Stockton)



Moonman, Eric
Roebuck, Roy
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Rose, Paul
Mr. Charles Grey and




Mr. Ioan L. Evans.

TRAFFIC CONDITIONS (CARSHALTON AND BANSTEAD)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bishop.]

11.37 p.m.

Captain Walter Elliot: Although my view may not be shared, I for one have a sense of relief in turning from the world-shaking events of the last couple of hours to the down-to-earth matters that affect the ordinary person. Nevertheless, the subject which I wish to discuss is a serious one.
I have before me three of my last week's local papers which contain headlines typical of the events which spotlight the problem. The headline in the Carshalton Times is:
Woman's death sparks off demand for crossing.
That in the Wallington and Carshalton Advertiser is:
New move to get pedestrian crossing.
That in the Banstead Herald is:
Nine cars crash in same spot in space of three minutes.
That last incident occurred in one of the roads which I intend to discuss tonight.
I want to make two points at the outset. Firstly, this is entirely a non-party matter. If I refer to the Ministry of Transport, it is because I have been collecting information only over the last couple of years or so. However, what I say might just as well apply to earlier Governments. It is a problem which is

building up and it has been for some years.
My second point is that, although, naturally, I am dealing with my own constituency, it is a problem which affects all the fringe areas of Greater London and one which is of vital interest to hundreds of thousands of people.
My constituency is a rather long, thin one, stretching from north to south. The northern half is Carshalton, the old Carshalton Urban District, now part of the Borough of Sutton, and is entirely in Greater London, but it contains quite large areas of green belt. The southern half of Banstead is entirely in the green belt. I think it is well known that during the last decade hundreds of thousands of people have moved out of central London further afield, many of them into the country, but there has been no building, or very little, in the green belt areas, for reasons which we know, so London has very largely leaped over the green belt and established itself further afield.
In addition, we know that an enormous number of new jobs have been generated in central London during the last decade, and this has made for greatly increased commuter traffic. It can be seen that areas like mine and others on the fringe are a sort of transit area for a lot of this commuter traffic. And it moves north, south, east, and west.
There are three aspects of the problem, and each of them must be considered and a proper balance reached. First, there is the traffic. Secondly, there are


the pedestrians, and thirdly there are the amenities of the area. We know that traffic must move, but with due consideration for pedestrians. My contention is that the relationship between the traffic and pedestrians has got out of balance in favour of the traffic in these fringe areas, and this imbalance is getting worse.
Perhaps I might give one example to illustrate that. In the whole of my area, with dense traffic going through at all times of the day, but with its peak hours, there is only one pedestrian crossing. This is opposite St. Helier Hospital in Carshalton. It is there to assist visitors to get across the road into the hospital, and this is by no means my busiest road.
I think that many people going through and not knowing these built-up and green belt areas on the fringe look on them as a somewhat amorphous area without any rallying points. In fact, when one gets to know my area, one realises that there are distinct village centres, which no doubt originated in the old medieval times. The people who live there are intensely concerned with the preservation of such amenities as have survived, and, of course, quite a number have. They are quite right to take this view. They would resist to the death any attempt to bulldoze these amenities out of the way so that motor cars could drive from central London down to Reigate or Dorking, south of my constituency.
I thought that to illustrate the traffic problems I would pick out certain key areas and describe the situation there. They are by no means all the difficult spots, and I expect that I shall get a shoal of letters from my constituents asking why I did not raise the case of their particular trouble spots.
First, there is the Rose Hill roundabout, on the edge of my constituency of Carshalton. It has two great—almost arterial—roads leading into and out of London, with a dual carriageway on one side, and then a side road, and another road leading off into Carshalton, another to Sutton, and another dual carriageway by-passing Sutton. That means that five big roads and a minor road all meet at that roundabout. In the rush hour it is a veritable Piccadilly Circus, but without the advantage of traffic lights.
I want to read one paragraph from a letter written to me by my local council:

The Borough Engineer has indicated that he has received a request for pedestrian crossing facilities at the junctions of all the roads leading to the Rose Hill roundabout, but he could not support the application as there are sufficient refuges provided to enable pedestrians to cross each road in relative safety.
That word "relative" accurately describes the situation it is an extremely busy roundabout, with practically no facilities for pedestrians. The only way to get over the difficulty is by way of flyovers or underpasses. I shall come to that possibility later.
My second trouble spot is Carshalton High Street. This is a burning issue. This is a very busy shopping centre in Carshalton, and I have had a vast number of demands from individuals and various associations about pedestrian crossing facilities. I want to read another paragraph from the same letter, on this subject:
The volume of traffic along High Street, Carshalton has been steadily increasing, and a count of traffic taken in 1965 gave an indication that the average traffic flow was 1,200 vehicles per hour between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. with the peak flow of 1,877 vehicles per hour. This average traffic flow was 11 per cent. above a similar count taken in 1964 and 84 per cent. above the 1958 figures. The total pedestrian flow across the High Street measured between the Square and Carshalton Place amounted to 2,368 during the twelve hours or an average of 197 per hour with a peak…of 291 pedestrians.
It is difficult to count pedestrians along a High Street—they cross everywhere—but if a crossing were provided it would concentrate people at that crossing, to a large extent—especially mothers with perambulators out doing their shopping, of which there is a large number.
I have consulted the police in the area about this spot, and they tell me that with the completion of the Croydon fly-over—which I understand is in course of construction and development of the Croydon Airport Housing Estate—they expect traffic in this High Street to increase, and make more a very serious problem.
It does not end there. The High Street continues to an area known as The Ponds, which is very dangerous. There have been many accidents there. It is rather narrow and winding, and carries a great deal of traffic. But The Ponds happens to be one of the most treasured amenity spots in Carshalton. It consists of a small area of clear water


fed from springs—very ancient—overlooked by a nice old coaching inn, with fine grounds and trees round about, and there is no doubt that if there was any attempt to widen the road, thereby concreting over part of The Ponds, the people of Carshalton would man the barricades. I have no doubt that I would be with them.
It seems to me that the solution there is possibly a bypass, re-routeing, and certainly a pedestrian crossing in the High Street. I quote:
As you "—
it refers to me—
are aware the appropriate Committee of the former Carshalton Urban District Council made repeated applications to the Ministry of Transport for the necessary authorisation to provide a pedestrian crossing in High Street, Carshalton, but they met with no success.
I turn now to Banstead High Street, which is very similar in a way to the Carshalton High Street. I can quote traffic flows, but as I do not want to take up too much time I will content myself by saying that at the peak it rises to 800 per hour, with about 50 pedestrians crossing but, again, this is a rather long street and the pedestrians are spread out. If pedestrian crossings were provided they would concentrate the pedestrians.
There is one special feature about the High Street at Banstead. At the southern end it is crossed at right angles by Bolters Lane, on the southern side of which there is, fortunately for the area, a large open space which has been used for many purposes. It has the public library, schools, a clinic, there will be a youth centre, and an old people's home. All those people using this area have to cross the road to get into Banstead proper.
I say that these are special circumstances because I want to quote what a previous Minister of Transport said in reply to a Parliamentary Question in November, 1964:
There are several factors to be taken into account in considering the provision of pedestrian crossings. The most important are the numbers of pedestrians and vehicles at the site. These would in differing circumstances be given different weight, which precludes a decision being taken solely on the basis of the number of pedestrians or vehicles involved."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1964; Vol. 702, c. 190.]

In the light of that reply, I suggest that the schools, the library, the youth centre, the clinic and the old people's home are special circumstances.
The next special case, also in Banstead, is Fir Tree Road. At Banstead, the British Rail station for London is on one side of Fir Tree Road, and on the other side is a large built-up area called Nork, while a little further away is Banstead itself. Large numbers of people use the Banstead railway station to go to London. At the peak time, there are 1,300 vehicles in Fir Tree Road, and the average is about 800 throughout the day. There is a peak of 155 pedestrians crossing. They go in bunches at a time, and they are often held up by or try to make their way through this very dense traffic at the rush hour. That situation would be helped by a pedestrian crossing.
My next spot is Brighton Road. That is a large main road running more or less north and south and cutting the Banstead area in half. It is dual carriageway for about half of its length but, in itself, it offers quite an obstacle to pedestrians. Many children have to cross it on their way to school. There are islands in the middle, and I admit that this is a difficult problem. I get a lot of requests for pedestrian crossings but I do not think that is a practical proposition, although underpasses at key points might be.
Another point about the Brighton Road is that there is dense traffic either way, coming north to London in the early morning and going south in the evening. It is extremely difficult for residents to get access to it. For example, from Waterhouse Lane, which serves a developed area known as Kingswood, I have had complaints of residents having to wait 20 minutes before being able to get on to the road. It seems to me that the installation of lights, slip roads, and so on, should be considered.
The Brighton Road continues south and subsequently is no longer dual carriageway and becomes a single road. Finally, it enters the village of Lower Kingswood, which it splits in two. In that area there have been a great many accidents. I would like to quote a submission by the local residents' association, 500 strong, to the Minister:
In this connection, my committee wish me to remind you that this is a very busy main


road, used by three London Transport bus services…it cuts in two the village shopping area, divides its four petrol filling stations, its two places of worship, and separates the primary school in Buckland Road from those children living across this road.
The residents' association submits its case for a speed limit of 30 m.p.h. through the area and pedestrian crossings.
My final point of trouble is in the Chipstead area. This is a built-up area.
The Banstead Council states:
The Council have made two applications for the imposition of a 30 m.p.h. speed limit on all roads in Chipstead, but these were turned down by the Ministry of Transport.
The Ministry gave the reasons that there were many similar areas in the country and it was obviously not practicable to have a 30 m.p.h. limit in all those areas. That neglects, however, my transit area theory which I have put forward for the area as a whole.
There is one road in Chipstead—the High Road—where a speed limit ought to be imposed. This is what was stated by one local resident, the secretary of the residents' association:
I find it quite incredible when one stops to think that there are children, some of whom go on foot to Fairdene school, and an old people's home, to say nothing of the frequent accidents at the Markedge Road junction, that no action has been taken to impose a 40 m.p.h. limit on this stretch. At least, this might have the effect of keeping motorists' speed down to 50 m.p.h.
Apart from those special places, it is a fairly well built-up area and well merits the imposition of a speed limit.
I think I have said enough to show that the traffic in this fringe, transit area is a great and growing problem and that we must strike a balance between the traffic, the pedestrians and the amenities. I believe that the balance now weighs too heavily to the advantage of the traffic.
I believe that consideration has to be given to major improvements such as by-passes, fly-overs, underpasses and road improvements, but I realise that they cost money and that the money available is usually earmarked for some time ahead.
A good deal can be done, of course, through traffic management, although in these sort of areas not a great deal. But what I think should be considered much more favourably now than in the past is the provision of pedestrian crossings. Requests by a local council for these

crossings should be considered much more sympathetically. Secondly, much more sympathetic consideration ought to be given to requests by a local council for speed limits on certain stretches of roads. I realise the difficulties of enforcement, but today more regard is paid to speed limits than in the past, because they are now more selective—some are 30 m.p.h., some 40 and some 50.
So I believe that help is within reach—the pedestrian crossings and the imposition of speed limits at the behest of the local council. If these are regarded more sympathetically, it will be a start towards redressing the balance which is now too heavily in favour of the traffic, and I trust the Minister will accept this.

12.3 a.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler): The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) has left me five minutes out of the 30 minutes of the Adjournment debate to reply—I understand that this debate must end at 12.7 a.m. Therefore as the hon. and gallant Gentleman has confronted me with a long catalogue of complaints, I shall be able to deal only with a very small number of them tonight. But I shall certainly deal with the others in correspondence with the hon. and gallant Gentleman.
As a reader of the Wallington and Carshalton Times,  I had advance information of some of the points raised by the hon. Gentleman, and I am sorry that I shall not be able to deal with all of them.
Let me deal first with the situation at Carshalton. The Urban District of Carshalton was incorporated on 1st April, 1965, in the London Borough of Sutton. There are no trunk roads actually in Carshalton, and therefore, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows, the Greater London Council is the highway authority for the three metropolitan roads, the A232 and small sections of the A217 and A297, which are in Carshalton. For all the other roads in Carshalton, the Borough of Sutton is the highway authority and the traffic authority in all cases is the Greater London Council. Therefore, in the first place, it is a matter for the G.L.C. to consider what improvements and developments should be made,


and I am certain they also take into account the important amenities to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has referred.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred particularly to the problems of pedestrians. Under Section 44 of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, it is for the local authority, in the first place, to propose sites for pedestrian crossings on roads other than trunk roads, but all these proposals have to be approved by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport.
In all these cases—and we are very concerned about this—we insist that there must be a certain volume of vehicle traffic and a certain level of demand by pedestrians themselves in order to gain the respect of motorists for pedestrian crossings, on the basis that they are constantly used.
It is on the application of these criteria that the demands for pedestrian crossings in Carshalton to date have been refused. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that there was heavy traffic throughout the day on one road he mentioned. I should like to see evidence of it. On the information which I have, although the situation is very bad in these places during the rush hour, the traffic throughout the day is not continuously heavy. Nor is the demand of pedestrians for crossings such as to warrant special measures on the grounds that such crossings would be continually used.
The hon. Member said that there was only one pedestrian crossing in Carshalton, on the B278 outside St. Helier

Hospital. There are also traffic signals at the junction of the A.217 and A.232 which are specially phased to assist pedestrians. As a Department we have laid down certain criteria in relation to the weight of traffic and to the demand of pedestrians for crossings, and so far these have not been satisfied in this district. I understand that during the past 18 months the G.L.C. have been discussing the position again with the London Borough of Sutton on the basis of new traffic figures, but I am also informed that the G.L.C. consider it unlikely that a site for a new crossing could be selected on the basis of the present criteria.
Let me offer the hon. Member this crumb of comfort: we have instituted a special experiment with pedestrian crossings in certain towns in the country. We are deliberately multiplying the numbers of crossings in certain towns and are comparing the experience there with that of other towns in order to check the existing criteria which we apply about the weight of traffic in relation to the demand for pedestrian crossings. It may well be that as the result of this experiment we shall be able to grant some of the demands which are made in Carshalton and Banstead.
As for Banstead, in the short time left I can merely say that we recognise that the traffic is heavy in this area, where the Surrey County Council are the highway authority, and a number of improvements to the roads are being programmed.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Twelve o'clock.